MENTAL HEALTH
Five ways to be mindful when gardening
Gardening for mindfulness, mental health and wellbeing
I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day. She is a yogi and we were talking about the benefits of living a mindful life.
But, what is mindfulness?
Headspace describes mindfulness as ‘the ability to be present and engaged on the task at hand without distraction of thought’. They say it can increase your happiness and levels of focus, whilst lessening your stress and feelings of sadness.
All this got me thinking. Couldn’t gardening and being in nature be one of the best ways that we can practice mindfulness? And we need go no further than our own gardens.
Due its very nature, gardening is a process that can engage you in the present, ground you in the current moment. Sowing seeds, nurturing plants, watering and weeding, all of these processes are the very essence of mindfulness itself.
And once we can master these mindful practices when we garden, we can then start to use them in our every day lives. We can continue our practices of mindfulness, being fully present, right from when we wake to when we go to sleep every day.
