HOW GARDENING AND OTHER EVERYDAY TASKS CAN HELP YOU PROCESS THOUGHTS & FEELINGS 

In this blog I talk about bringing meditation into the everyday to help process our thoughts and feelings, Using gardening and house work as a meditation activity!

This may sound perfectly ridiculous and not in the slightest bit relaxing, but if you approach it in the right way, believe me, gardening and housework can be extremely therapeutic.   

You may have heard the expression that a cluttered house reflects a clutter mind, but actually, almost everything within your external world can act as a reflection of what’s going on for you internally if you choose to look at it with an enquiring mind. Some people naturally find having a chuck out, tidying, cleaning or gardening very therapeutic for various reasons, but all of the above and more besides can be hugely helpful as part of a contemplation and meditation activity. It can really help you process thoughts and feelings that may be arising during your pausal journey and, as many of us know, this can be a deeply unsettling or difficult time.  

Let me give you an example. During the lockdown, many of us felt very stressed, anxious, fearful or overwhelmed (to name but a few uncomfortable emotions), even if we were not perimenopausal. Often our world reflected that back to us: perhaps strained relationships with loved ones, difficult conversations, not bothering to dress “nicely”, the house becoming increasing either untidy and unloved, or conversely, obsessively tidy as if in seeking to take some kind of control where we felt we had none. There were as many reflected expressions of our thoughts and feelings as there were unique emotions.  

For me, I suffered with frozen shoulder during the pandemic which worsened significantly the day after the announcement of the second national lockdown. The excruciating physical pain and extremely restricted movement was an accurate reflection of how the lockdown affected me physically (I wasn’t allowed to move around freely in my community as I would have wished), mentally and emotionally. However, I took regular opportunities to reflect on deeper aspects of my life, my thought processes and emotions whilst gardening during this this period of time.  

The strongest and most profound memory I have of this was when I was weeding the garden one day. I decided to use gardening as my meditation and contemplation time. Each weed I pulled out came to represent something I was ready to let go of in my life, often ways of thinking or feeling, something that was perhaps preventing me from achieving my full potential or from experiencing joy – just as a weed takes up vital nutrients that could otherwise be used by the plants I had chosen to nurture. I became very specific and named each one as I pulled it out and dropped it in the brown garden bin to be removed from my property completely. Examples may be recognising and releasing – for that day at least - my short temper with my child around their school work, releasing feelings of resentment around being the provider of all meals – insignificant it now seems, but at the time, it was hugely negative holding that resentment within me! Then came a large weed with a very deep and strong root. As I finally released it from its anchoring in the Earth, I experienced an intense pain in my shoulder that brought me to tears. I recognised at that moment that all of the feelings of restriction (and perhaps even entrapment of staying home with my children and trying to do my best to educate them and feeling like I was failing) were held within the shoulder and letting go of all of that was extremely painful. The reason for the deeper pain than all the other weeds I had pulled out was that it was also rooted in the memory of the mentally and emotionally difficult time I had had adjusting to motherhood some 10 years beforehand. Feelings I had buried deep. Feelings I would have been able to hide from myself perhaps forever if lockdown had never happened. And somehow, the relief that I had uncovered something way deeper than just the difficulty of the moment and the current situation was a massive relief. 

It took some weeks of meditating on it further and addressing all the various aspects of my deep-rooted pain before I really felt the full benefit of the gardening activity that day. And slowly, slowly, from that moment my shoulder pain strangely seemed to ease.  

This is just one of many examples I could have chosen to use, but I felt it was really pertinent to this topic and this group of women. Perimenopause and menopause bring such a range of problems and challenges to us ladies and few of them are very easily managed. However, the challenges themselves may also be exacerbated by previous experiences and patterns of behaviour or our relationship with our body, our femininity or our attitude towards aging and moving into the latter stages of our adult life.  

I highly recommend using housework and gardening as contemplative and meditative activities. You can choose to go as deep as you want to for your self-reflections, but here are some simple ideas: 

• As you have a clear out, offer yourself the opportunity to let each item you’re chucking out, represent a thought, a feeling, an attitude, a belief about yourself/another person/a situation that you are ready to let go of 
• As you make space, revel in how it looks, how it feels and congratulate yourself on your work. Think about what you will invite into this space in future: happy times, time for relaxation or me time, a new organiser to help you order your thoughts… anything you like! 
• As tidy your space, consider what mental or emotional aspects of you you need to “put away”, order or clarify. Consider what rooms or areas of rooms in your house represent the various parts of you. 
• As you garden, let the beautiful flowers, trees, shrubs or fruits represent the things you are grateful for in life, your achievements, your special relationships or your personal qualities and strengths to boost your positivity 

• As you weed, offer yourself the opportunity to reflect on what you have let take root within you that is not bringing you joy.  
• If you need to create a new boundary in your garden, consider what clear boundaries you set around behaviour and relationships with those you love in your life. Are there any people who you allow to overstep the mark or who always ask for favours but never actually return them? And consider how you may set better or clearer boundaries as a result. 
• And if that all feels a little deep for you, really uses your senses as you clean, tidy or garden: what do you see, hear, smell as you work and how does your body move? Play some music as you do and bring a little lighter feeling and movement – dance if you want to – into your chores. Find the joy where there would otherwise be the daily trudge! 
   

For more guidance on meditation and calming your mind from Detzi Simpson - Click the image below: