5 Benefits of a Zen Garden That Will Improve Your Life
It’s more than a beautiful table ornament.
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Created by Zen monks as part of their meditation routines, nowadays, zen gardens are used worldwide to decorate outside areas thanks to their easy maintenance and relaxed appearance.
Zen gardens are also known as karesansui, a Japanese word meaning “dry landscape,” referring to the fact that gravel, stones, and boulders are the main features.
Zen gardens are now available in smaller sizes; you can arrange your Japanese garden on a small tray to place on the table as a decoration.
1. Relieves Stress and Anxiety
How can a Zen garden help you relieve stress and anxiety? After all, it’s just a garden, or maybe not?
Taking care of a Zen garden means you will do the same repetitive actions like rake the sand or the gravel, designing waves or circles.
You will soon find out how focusing on repetitive actions is an excellent way to calm your mind. It will also help you concentrate on the present moment and positively enjoy the experience.
Concentrating on the garden’s layout and trying to create the most harmonious position of all its elements will help you take a break from your busy life and quiet your mind.
2. Improves Your Meditation Skills
Zen gardens are quiet places created to meditate. The whole process of taking care of the park can be considered a meditative practice, along with the more common exercise of silent contemplation of the calm environment.
Keep a Zen garden on your desk; it will help you remind you to train your meditation skill.
Imagine being in that garden, take care of it, or choose a concept to focus on like the idea of impermanence, the absence of self, or dualism. Let any other thoughts pass.
Meditation can help you reach a broader perspective and see past what’s in front of you.
Having a Zen garden always available can give you the chance to meditate more than once a day.
Whenever you feel the need to take a break, you can focus on your desk garden and meditate to eliminate any negative thoughts and embrace the positive ones.
3. It Will Help You Develop a Sense of Beauty.
Zen gardens are based on three Japanese concepts:
- Kanso, simplicity. Zen garden consists of a few simple decorative elements combined to create beautiful landscapes.
- Fukinsei, asymmetrical balance. Half a circle, stones displayed not in a linear way. Fukinsei is the art of creating a relaxing layout without following a precise arrangement of the objects.
- Yugen, it can be translated with “a subtle grace,” “hidden beauty,” and “mysterious profundity.” A Zen garden isn’t just a garden. The position of the elements may hide a deeper meaning than mere aesthetic design.
Zen gardens, in particular the small ones, offer you the chance to rearrange it as many times as you like until you manage to create a stunning pattern.
Practicing different layouts in a small area will help you improve your sense of aesthetics and ability to apply it to every other environment, like house, office, or even clothing.
4. Enhance Your Creative Flow
Working on a Zen garden will stimulate your creativity, and you will learn to see things from different points of view, which is great for problem-solving.
Meditating and practicing mindfulness will increase your ability to produce new ideas and reduce undesirable thoughts during artistic activities.
Small or big, the zen garden will help you express yourself at your best and experiment new layout for your structure.
Add to your garden some inspirational quotes to read when looking for stimulus.
5. It Helps You Increase Your Focus, Discipline, and Concentration.
Practicing meditation in a Zen garden or taking care of a small one can improve focus, patience, and self-control.
The meditative practice and the repetitive movement you make rearranging the garden will improve your ability to stay on task longer and can even help you fighting addictions and improving mindfulness.
Meditation practitioners can also experience lower blood pressure and a stronger immune system.
A small Zen garden on the desktop can also work as a reminder to stay concentrated.
“Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.” — Shunryu Suzuki
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