By Lisa Lin, BA, RMT
Building a relationship with yourself that is healing, is much like tending to a garden. When a garden grows and prospers we see color, pungent beauty and luscious green leaves growing towards the sun. This takes practice, love, care and time, it is not a one time ditch effort for those results. If the garden becomes neglected, no longer loved, tended to nor valued, it withers, turns brown and becomes weak. There is still the spark of life deep in the earth, but if neglected or abused enough it becomes very hard to find. Some of the most beautiful gardens we see over the summer months have grown out of timeless love, patience and skill by their gardeners.
I remember when I was a child, my parents, although very busy at work, planted a two tier garden every year that covered half of our backyard. My grandmother would come visit and spend hours weeding and harvesting the vegetables. When I was quite young, I’d stand next to my dad and ask multiple questions (I’m still like that!) while he was digging potatoes out of the ground. Later we’d shell countless peas, scrub soil embossed carrots, and pull beans. When summer hail would come, we’d anxiously await the end of the storm to see if the garden would survive. It always did.
This is the amazing power of nature to nourish and grow with a timeless rhythm. This same nature flows through our own blood, bone and tissues. It ignites our brains, opens our hearts and inspires great health. These resources are available to us to cultivate at any time.
How To Tap Into The Power Of Nature For Your Health
There are numerous ways to do this, endless in fact, but if we return to the simple concept of self care, we are growing our own garden of health with these basic practices.
- Breathe – oxygen – use your lungs – breathwork, singing, laughing, blowing bubbles in the swimming pool
- Water – the staple of life. Consume half of your body weight in ounces of water each day. For example, a 150lb person is recommended to drink 75 ounces of water per day. More even in hot climates and with exertion.
- Nutrition – vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, proteins and fats to nourish you. Include lots of plant based food.
- Exercise – pull out the weeds, till the soil, plant flowers. Use a balance of cardiovascular exercise (egs. brisk walking, biking), strength training (egs. weight training, pilates, medicine ball) and stretching (egs. yoga and stretching) each week.
Healing NW Calgary
Want to thrive with a more natural lifestyle and holistic approach to building your health? I work with an amazing group of compassionate and skilled practitioners, all very talented in their respective fields – naturopathic medicine, chiropractic care, counseling psychology, craniosacral work, and life coaching. I practice massage therapy, reiki, and reflexology. This is integrative medicine – tapping into natural healing modalities to build and restore health. Any one of us or a combination of the above at Docere Wellness Centre can support you in building your self care practice. You don’t need to grow and tend to your health garden all by yourself. Everything you need is at hand. The most important role and the one in charge is the head gardener – that is you. Happy Spring!