Nourishing your 'Heart Flower'

What if your heart was enclosed inside a beautiful, soft, delicate but vibrant flower? It’s petals gently resting over your beating heart keeping it shielded and protected from the hurts and pains of everyday life.

If you had the option to leave this flower closed with your heart secure and tucked up inside it or if you could nourish, nurture and help this flower to slowly and gently open it’s petals, spreading them as widely as possibly and bathing in sunshine, warmth and love, letting your heart emerge and truly live, feel and love, which option would you choose?

I would absolutely choose to let my heart live and love fully and wholly! I have slowly learned that gently caring for and empowering my ‘heart flower’ to raise its petals and to allow my heart to surface and to feel the joys, hurts and pains of human existence has been the most transforming and life changing skill I have ever embodied.

Of course, we all want to keep ourselves safe and shielded from pain as who wants to feel mental, emotional or physical pain? Not many people I am sure. But unfortunately, as humans, we will all experience pain in our lives. So why not do this with a beautifully cared for and nurtured garden in your heart, where your ‘heart flower’ can fill itself full of the all the positive and nourishing elements from our environment needed to live through hurt and pain but also allowing it to gently close again when needed to shield and protect itself during times of increased stress or anxiety?

As beautifully described by Debasish Mridha:

“Nourish yourself with the water of love to grow flowers of happiness in the garden of your heart”.

This concept is something I have been working with a lot lately in my own personal daily living and I have also began to bring this learning and teaching into my daily work with children, teens and adults.

I find the analogy of planting seeds of love and kindness in our hearts and choosing to live with awareness and through acts of kindness, compassion and in particular self-compassion as a way of nourishing these seeds to full bloom so empowering!

I love how this theory and practise enhances anyone’s ability to introduce or increase their access to nature and to nature connection, whether in the mind, heart or body.

Research is mounting as to the positive health benefits of having some time connecting with nature daily. People have reported feeling less stressed, calmer with lower heart rates, lower blood pressure, better sleep, digestion and immune function after spending some time daily outdoors or through visualisation, listening to nature music or painting if time physically outdoors is not possible.

All of these examples help us to create a slower pace of living in our mind and in turn, our body positively responds!

The power of imagining your heart as being a garden and that you get to choose what kind of seeds that you want to plant in it, to prune, to nurture and to live with is incredible.

I personally find that this helps me create a softer, more loving and caring version of myself with a deep realisation that I need to invest the time, patience and energy into my own heart garden if I want to reap what I sow! I need to shower my heart garden with love and understanding if I want to help to bring it to full bloom.

In the words of Dr Armin A. Zadeh:

“Love is a delicate flower that needs nurturing and protection to bloom”.

HOW TO NOURISH YOUR HEART FLOWER:

Take regular moments throughout your day to pause and connect to your heart and soul. Place your hand upon your heart and use your breath to send life force oxygen to your beating heart.
Express thankfulness daily to your heart and every part of your body for everything it does to keep you alive every second.
Nourish your heart, mind and body with kind, caring and compassionate words and thoughts, those that will help your ‘heart flower’ to bloom into vibrancy.
Ensure that your environment is one that will help and promote the best personal growth and care for you. Plant the kind of seeds that you want to grow in your ‘heart garden’ and prune and weed out anything that you do not wish to live with daily.
Understand that just like nature, everything takes time and patience. Trust in the natural process, just like Mother Earth trusts in herself and her natural cycles.
Make time every day for self-care. Nurture your heart and body with the things that you love to do in life, things that ignite your soul and things that will help your ‘heart flower’ to open and emerge into full bloom!

Closed Heart Flower

Opening Heart Flower

Heart Flower in Full Bloom

Thank you as always to Brian O’Loughlin at The Westmeath Examiner and his team at Celtic Media Group (https://www.anglocelt.ie/, https://www.con-telegraph.ie/, https://www.meathchronicle.ie/, https://www.offalyindependent.ie/, https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/ and https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/ for all their wonderful help!

As published by The Celtic Media Group 9/4/2022

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Leona McDonnell

Hi, I’m Leona McDonnell and I am a Mindfulness Teacher. I empower the children, teenagers and adults that I work with through Mindfulness, Meditation and Wellness with the belief that they already have all of the resources they need inside themselves to be the best version of themselves possible …. they just need to learn how to connect to and utilise these internal resources. I teach those I work with how to experience calm, peace and serenity in their everyday lives and I teach people how to reduce the everyday chatter in their minds. Having always being a very nervous and anxious child and teenager, from being afraid of my own breath, my own heartbeat, my own shadow, from undergoing numerous emergency medical surgeries with complicated recoveries, ICU admission, from anxiety, trauma and post natal depression to getting glandular fever in my mid 30’s, with 2 young children at home, working outside the home and also running my own Healing Practice, I hit breaking point in my own life some years back. I was stuck in a state of ‘Flight’, in a state of continuous panic. I had a broken mind, a broken body and a depleted soul. I didn’t know what to do, where to go, how to fix things. It was the toughest time and recovery of my life…. I then stumbled upon a local Yoga class and I decided to join it to see if I could create some calmness into my invasive mind and thoughts. I can remember not being able to even change my own natural breathing rhythm for the first few weeks, as I was in such a panicked state. As time went on, I grew to love Yoga as it made me reconnect with my body and my breath. It made me learn to trust my breath again. I then went on and sought out Mindfulness tools and techniques that I could introduce into my daily life. I slowly learned how to become more present in my life. I learned how to stop ruminating in my past and how to stop worrying about my future and just be present and accept the only moment I could change, which is the present moment, the most important moment. I learned how to ‘Train my Brain’ using Mindfulness tools and techniques. Coupled with Gratitude Journaling, Meditation and with a lot of time spent outdoors in nature, I began to feel much better. I began to feel much more centered in myself, more grounded, calmer and more present. After a number of years of my own daily Mindfulness, Meditation and Yoga practice, I felt amazing and had a zest for life! At this point, I decided that I needed to share with and help as many children and adults as I could with what helped me to transform my life! So I went on and did my Mindfulness training and here I am today!