Tending to the Garden of the Mind
Spring Wisdom from the Yoga Tradition
As the days grow warmer and brighter, many of us feel a natural pull toward caring for our environment—deep cleaning our homes and tending our gardens. While attention and energy naturally move outward, the yoga teachings offer a steady reminder to continue tending to the inner environment, especially the garden of the mind.
The Mind's Role in Wellbeing
The mind is integral to health and happiness, and to maintain a state of mental balance, understanding the mind is essential. The Vedic tradition sees the mind as the inner instrument of consciousness that enlivens each one of us.
In this approach, the anatomy of the mind is organized in different frequencies and functions:
The higher mind comprehends universal truths and eternal wisdom
The middle mind processes emotions and sensory experiences
The lower mind grasps only the physical world
Understanding the mind through the lens of Yoga and Ayurveda happens primarily through cultivating a clear and compassionate observer within. This innermost self can then practice with the mind, developing higher mental frequencies and functions.
Cultivating Your Inner Garden
In the garden of the mind, the innermost self is the loving gardener. This gardener employs three essential practices:
Observing the garden: Simply being with the mind and all sensory and emotional experiences, accepting these experiences and perhaps even exploring deeper layers of what is real and present.
Pulling weeds: Reducing harmful influences by challenging fixed or distorted perceptions, inquiring into motivations for behaviors, and practicing restraint to regulate potentially harmful choices.
Planting seeds of presence: Growing more of what is desired—the blossoms of thinking, speech, and choices that are honest and benevolent.
Together, these three practices further develop the clear and compassionate observer within.
Your Invitation
This month, we invite you to connect with the loving gardener in your heart and tend to the garden of your mind. No matter what flower, color, or quality you choose to bloom as, at Jane's House, you always have a place to practice and grow!