I use this season as a time for ‘shedding’, for ‘letting go’ for ‘lightening my personal load’.  I see it as a time to prepare to revert back into myself, to reflect on what’s serving me well in my life and what is depleting me before the winter season, where I love to retract, restore, renew and revitalise myself. 

When I teach Mindfulness and in my own daily practice, I love to use the analogy of ‘Natures Life Cycle’ to teach people how to honour and embrace each of the seasons in their own ‘life cycles’.  Mother Earth and nature in general carry thousands of years of wisdom, of grace, of hope, of inspiration and of growth.  So wise is Mother Earth to realise that her elements of foliage need time and patience to seed, nurture, grow, bloom, shed and restore.  We too as humans need to adapt this very wise cycle into our own human  lives.  We are not superhumans, we are not robots.  We all need time to gently seed ourselves, to grow, to bloom, to repair and recover in our own life cycles.

Think of how each season in nature works.  In Spring, there is a very gentle, neutral pace of growth or budding under the surface or internally that occurs on our trees, plants, shrubs and flowers.  A lot of this phase of the life cycle is not seen by the naked human eye until the little buds start to sprout.  This stage is one of personal and individual growth, at each host’s own steady pace.  There is no pressure to keep up with a ‘defined’ or ‘expected’ growth pattern.    Then during the season of Summer, most of Mother Earths foliage is in full bloom and blossom.  This is a period of great colour, of expression, of vibrancy.  There are long hours of daylight and warmer temperatures to be absorbed by our trees, plants, shrubs and flowers.  It is a season of celebration. 

Then as Autumn approaches, the foliage is so full, so heavy, filled to the top of absorbed nutrients from the previous season.  This is a welcome season to start to ‘lighten the load’, to ‘shed’ and ‘let go’ of leaves, of bloom, of colour.  This is a season to start to bare the soul and expose elements that have been covered over or ‘hidden’ up to now. 

Nature next welcomes the season of Winter.  This is a time for deep reflection, for retracting back into oneself, for hibernating, for repairing, renewing and restoring deep under the surface of the earth or internally.  This is a time to rejoice for the planting, growth and bloom seasons just had and a time for really embracing the shorter days of light, the cooler air temperatures, the frost tipped grass, perhaps the fall of snow. 

So how can we apply this concept to our own daily lives?  I find it very useful to visualise and embrace my own life and my life cycles just like nature does.  Through Mindfulness, Meditation and Self-Compassion, I have grown to understand, accept and love that I need time in my life to plant my own internal seeds, to nurture my thoughts, mind and body to budding and growth.  I need to nourish myself with fresh air, with water, with good food, with sufficient rest time, with all the elements that I need to help me to progress and embrace my cycle of bloom and full blossom.  I have also learned the importance of being able to let go of any worries, stresses, strains or fears that do not pose an immediate threat or physical danger to my life.  I don’t need to carry around these extra burdens, or pains, or emotions with me every day.  I have learned the extreme necessity of creating rest, restore, renew and reflection time in my life.  I now embrace any opportunity to deeply retract into myself, to sit in stillness, to listen to my heart more so than my thoughts, to nourish and nurture myself deep below my own surface and below my own roots. 

The most beautiful thing about adapting this analogy to our everyday living is that our own life cycles don’t have to be in sync with natures life cycles.  We might need different elements of growth, rest, repair or retraction at different or numerous stages throughout our own lives! 

An inspiring quote that I love is:

“There is beauty to be found in the changing of earth’s seasons, and an inner grace in honouring the cycles of life”

(Jack Kornfield)

HOW to ‘Shed’ and ‘Let Go’ using Mindfulness:

The following is a step by step guide on how to ‘shed’ and ‘let go’ using Mindfulness:

1. As you sit with a straight spine or lie down, bring your awareness to your breath, your natural breathing rhythm.

2. Now take 3 regulating breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

3. As you do so, consciously give yourself permission to lighten the tension in your jaw, your shoulders, your arms, your legs. Say to yourself “I give myself permission to let go of anything not serving me well at the moment”.

4. On your next in-breath, bring an awareness to the fact that it is impossible for you to take this next in-breath before you physically let the last in-breath go. With this awareness, as you breathe in, say to yourself, “I give myself permission” and on the out-breath, say to yourself, “to let go of fear and anxiety”.

5. On the next in-breath, say to yourself, “I give myself permission” and on the out-breath, say to yourself “to let go of pain, grief or trauma”.

6. On the next in-breath, say to yourself, “I give myself permission” and on the out-breath, say to yourself “to let go of stress and suffering”.

7. You can continue steps 4,5 and 6 for as long as you wish, personally choosing what you wish to say to yourself on your out-breath, you as let go.

8. When you are ready, bring your awareness to how calm, peaceful, lighter and rejuvenated you feel in your mental, emotional and physical body. When you are ready, gently open your eyes and let go of the practice.

By Leona McDonnell Mindfulness and Wellness/

As published by The Celtic Media Group in The Anglo Celt, Connaught Telegraph, Meath Chronicle, Offaly Independent, Westmeath Examiner and Westmeath Independent newspapers w/c 9/11/2020)

Thank you to Brian o’Loughlin at the Westmeath Examiner https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/ for all his wonderful help!

We have all heard the term a ‘cup of sunshine’ before or maybe we have even been asked ‘how do you fill your cup of sunshine?’ In my past, I always felt the concept was a bit cliché and didn’t really give it much thought. I kind of just had the outlook, you get up, get through another day, maybe not even laughing or smiling, just trying to keep up, you eat, you go to bed and then start the same saga again the very next day. What limiting and crippling thoughts these were of mine. How can anyone settle for just getting through another day, for just showing up, perhaps distracted, unresponsive, consumed by another world of heavy thoughts, experiences and a general lack of lustre for life?

As I started and adopted a Mindful approach to my everyday living over the last number of years, this concept of the ‘cup of sunshine’ became and now sits as a paramount ingredient to my every day, my every thought, my every action, to my overall life. I never really bothered to think about the concept ‘how can you pour from an empty cup?’ This is a slightly different scenario to the ‘is your glass half full or half empty’ concept as this scenario suggests that there is as much positivity and energy in the glass as there is negativity and exhaustion.

When we talk about pouring from your ‘cup of sunshine’, we talk about choosing the things that we want to fill our own individual cup up with so that we have not just enough, but an abundance of positivity, hope, love, care, energy, fun, laughter, support and ‘whole hearted life’ to pour to ourselves and to those who we wish to share our ‘cup of sunshine’ with. This is a critical key element of this concept. We learn to establish who deserves a share form our ‘cup of sunshine’, who we really want to give some of it to. We learn to stop letting others undeservedly and without permission drain our ‘cup of sunshine’ and perhaps steal something from us that was never meant for them.

So how do you fill your ‘cup of sunshine’? This is a question I am asked regularly. So many people feel so consumed by the general pace of living, by work/life balance or lack of, by the invasion of technology and social media into our lives. They can’t see how they could top up or restore their ‘cup of sunshine’. The question I always reply with is “but how do you expect to keep pouring from your cup if it’s depleted, if it’s just surviving from day to day, if it’s exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, unable to find the space to take a break and just breathe”?

A lot of the time, people respond to this question by describing how they can’t find the time in their day to do something that ignites their passion and their soul, something that allows them to laugh until tears are strolling down their cheeks or until they can barely catch their breath in between hearty giggles, something that fills their mind, their body and emotions with a drive and gratitude for life. This sounds incredibly unbelievable? That in the 24 hours of life that we are gifted with each day we wake up from our sleep, that there is not even 5 minutes, 10 minutes or even 1 hour to embrace self-care, self-love and passion? Perhaps living with the opinion that ‘I don’t deserve the time for self-care, for exercise, for meditation, for laughing, for having fun, for living’.

I always ask “but why don’t you deserve this time, this space to refuel, to grow, to fill your ‘cup of sunshine’ full of the special and precious things to you in your life”? I explain that in order for us to be able to be our own best friend, to be loving, caring, compassionate and fun filled towards ourselves and others, it is critical to take the time for self-care. It is not selfish to take some time to meet friends, to go to the cinema, to go out for a nice meal, to visit family, to take a day or two off work, to buy those new runners or jeans, to join an exercise class, to swim, to walk, to run, to sleep, to listen to a meditation, to do yoga, to tend to your garden, to tell those in close quarters to you that you ‘need’ time for your repair, your recovery and your personal growth and expansion.

I can promise you from first-hand experience, when you learn to create this time for self-care, you will never go back!! You can work with those in your household to agree a plan so that each household or family member gets their down-time, their time to refill their ‘cup of sunshine’. You should always leave room in the plan for when someone in the household may be feeling sickly and need extra rest and recovery time or maybe is experiencing a challenging personal time and needs extra space and time for solitude and for self-care. It all works in swings and roundabouts!! It is also a fantastic way of being able to recognise when someone in your household is struggling a little and needs extra help and support. Therefore, it is so important that everyone works daily at keeping their ‘cup of sunshine’ topped up so that there is always an available source of love, protection and guidance on tap. How can you expect to support and give love and encouragement to anyone else if you don’t work daily at keeping your own ‘cup of sunshine’ topped up?

Realising the true value and utmost importance of this concept really was a game changer in my own life. I always say that when I’m energised, full of positivity, capable of letting go and laughing, being silly and having good old fun, my household is in pure bliss!! My husband, children and animals are all in great spirits and embrace the light heartedness of life. However, when my ‘cup of sunshine’ is depleted and I am tired, overwhelmed, in-patient, contrary and give out about little things, like the mess of the house, my household erupts!! My husband and children feel the negative energy and start to behave similarly to me, which creates so much unnecessary stress, tension and upset in the house. I even find that the animals become more needy, following me around and constantly looking for food!!

Topping up your ‘cup of sunshine’ really does work. We are all only human, we are not robots, we need to be able to have fun, do things that make us feel really alive but we also need time to rest, restore and renew. Taking time out for ourselves is not selfish, is not ridiculous, is not a waste of time. Creating a precious space and time in our own daily lives for self-care and for doing whatever it is that’s helps to top up our ‘cup of sunshine’ is one of the most responsible and rewarding things you can do for yourself and for those close to you. You will create a deeper awareness and connection to your soul and what it desires to feel truly alive.

So, the question remains, ‘how do you fill up your cup of sunshine?’

Leona McDonnell

By Leona McDonnell Mindfulness and Wellness_28-6-2020

(As Published in The Westmeath Examiner newspaper on 7-7-2020 and in the The Anglo Celt and The Meath Chronicle newspapers on 8-7-2020)

The answer is very simple! You create a time and space in your day, each day and you learn to sit with yourself. You learn to breathe with yourself. You learn to listen to yourself, encourage, motivate and empower yourself. You learn to nurture and care for yourself and most importantly, you learn to love yourself, from the inside out.

Learning to love yourself is without doubt a very challenging task. So many of us cannot bring ourselves to give a compliment to ourselves or others and are even worse at accepting a compliment from someone else. It is an instinct for our egos to take over and intercept before we graciously let ourselves blush in confidence and pride. How many times has someone said to you “wow, you look great, have you lost weight?” How many of us have answered “oh well I could do with losing a lot more!”. This is the ego sabotaging our good work and rail roading our progress. Wouldn’t it be a completely different scenario to reply to the same question by saying “thank you so much, I feel really great at the moment?” A completely different concept really.

My ethos is based around ‘healing ourselves from the inside out’. This is how I transformed my own life. There was a point in my life where I could not stand or sit in my own presence for even a few minutes. I continuously distracted myself with housework that ‘needed’ to be done or calls that ‘needed’ to be made. Anything was easier than having to be present with just myself. So how could I possibly heal or transform myself? I needed to get to know ‘the real me’. I needed to give my mind, body and emotions time to disconnect from each other, repair individually and then reconnect with one another. They needed to reconnect with me, as a communicative and functioning being.

I found the analogy of a butterfly’s life cycle so empowering and healing during this stage of my life. When you think about it, does the caterpillar ever think it will transform after complete metamorphosis into a beautiful free flying, free spirited butterfly? We will never know. But I do know that during this difficult stage of my life, I could never see myself as anything past that caterpillar stage. I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin, so full up of past trauma’s, worries, anxieties and fears that I was about to burst. Just like a caterpillar shedding its skin five times before entering its Pupa stage, letting go of the excess plants it had eaten so that it could become more comfortable and lighter in its own skin, I needed to shed layers of my own demons before I could start my transformation.

To do this, I meditated daily, enjoyed yoga, filled numerous notebooks by gratitude journaling, spent a lot of time walking outside with Mother Earth and started to speak kinder to myself. I accepted with compassion the difficult thoughts, the fears, the days which did not seem to go as I wished. I grew to accept and gained comfort from knowing that I was never going to be perfect, I am only human after all. As humans, we will never be perfect, what is perfect anyway? We and life are continually changing and evolving and so we are always on a continuous learning path. We may never be perfect, but we can learn to enjoy the journey.

Upon shedding and letting go of excess baggage, the butterfly then enters its Cocooning stage, it’s protective stage. This is a period of self-growth, of transformation. I used this period of my life as a protective time of self-recovery, of retreat, of reflection and of personal connection. Once I had shed my baggage, I used this time to restructure my mind, to reinvent my thoughts in a positive, kind and compassionate manner. This was a very intimate phase in my healing journey. It was a stage where I wanted to be cocooned with only me, with only my new positive and nurturing mindset and with my new understanding and compassionate way of living.

Slowly over time, my protective cocoon started to break open. I was becoming free. Free of my previous thoughts, memories, anxieties and I was now ready to launch myself and to fly high in life. This is the last stage in a butterfly’s life cycle. Now ready to propel itself into nature as a newly mature butterfly. It breaks free of its cocoon and takes a leap of faith as it waits for its wings to start flapping and flying. This beautiful butterfly completely unrecognisable from the bulging caterpillar a short while before, now a life completely transformed, completely renewed, oozing with an abundance of clarity, of hope, of dreams, of influence, of happiness and of health.

Another interesting concept to think about; ‘can a butterfly fly with only one wing?’ I wouldn’t fancy its chances. We can apply this theory to ourselves in creating and or enhancing our own healing journey or life transformation. Think of one of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Kindness and Compassion for ourselves and others. Think of the second of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Mindfulness. Just like the butterfly needing both of its wings to fly, we need Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to aid, enhance and facilitate our own personal transformation, healing and life journey.

We can envisage ourselves needing both these wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to work together, in sync with one another, in an agreeable and equally effective rhythm in order for us to fly high in our own lives. We are all equally capable of entering a cycle of transformation in our own personal journeys. I guess some of us will decide to do it sooner than others and others will do it later in their lives but maybe at a different pace. There are no rules. Just like every butterfly, we can decide when we are ready to enter our protective cocooning stage and ultimately when we are ready to emerge as a newly transformed being.

We all have this innate ability to develop this deeply intimate relationship with ourselves, to deeply connect with ourselves and to learn to love who we are and to love who we can transform into. The question is, ‘are you ready to spread your wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness and soar high above your expectations? Are you ready to heal and transform yourself from the inside out?’

Leona McDonnell

(As published in the Westmeath Examiner Newspaper on 16-6-2020 and in
The Anglo Celt and The Meath Chronicle Newspaper on 17-6-2020)

When you think about it, we are all born with a heart which starts to beat very early on in our mother’s womb. From this second onwards, we have the ability to live, to love, to feel empathy and to give and receive kindness and compassion. Our beating hearts keep us alive every single second of every day of life that we are gifted with. They act like the engine room on a ship, a very large, complicated and intricate ship. Just like this engine room on the ship, our heart controls every element of our existence.

We are all gifted with lungs to breathe. Some of us are blessed with two lungs, some with one lung, some with perfectly healthy lungs, some with compromised lungs. Our lungs provide us with essential air and life force every second of every day. Without our lungs, we cannot breathe the oxygen that our body needs to survive. How many of us actually stop and think about what our heart and lungs do for us minute by minute? Some of us do, some of us don’t. We don’t need to as they beat and breathe independently every day. Thankfully, this is the case! If we had to remember to breathe every second to stay alive, we would all be in trouble! Our minds continuously wander and get distracted by life in general, so it would be a difficult task to remember to breathe in order to stay alive. Another question; how many of us express gratitude for these special gifts of life? How many of us view ourselves as being blessed with life every day that we experience our hearts beating and lungs breathing independently?

So essentially, with just these two functioning elements, we already have everything we need within us to stay alive. We can apply the same concept to our thoughts, emotions and feelings. With the fast paced era we are used to living in, so many of us have forgotten, or maybe never realised in the first place, that we can pause, we can connect with ourselves and that we all have control and choices over how we want to live our lives.

This is the fundamental aspect that I lost control over when I was in the depth of my own anxiety and at the mercy of my increasingly destructive thoughts and mind. I felt like I was being continually chased by a dark shadow whom I feared desperately. I didn’t quite know why this shadow was chasing me, but I never wanted to hang around to find out. I was
continually searching and seeking for that ‘professional person’ or ‘practice’ that would ‘fix me’ and help me to feel less invaded by my own thoughts and mind. I never thought for one second that I could in fact be that ‘professional person’ and that I could go on to carve, shape and implement my journey of healing and recovery.

It wasn’t until I started to practice Mindfulness, Meditation and Yoga that I learnt to rest in the uncomfortable space my mind and body was in. I learnt how to be patient with every feeling of panic, with every debilitating fearful thought, with the numerous tears of anxiety, depression and sadness that I shed. I learnt how to treat my mind, my emotions and my physical body like I would treat my very best friend. I also learnt how to soothe and comfort myself instead of ripping myself apart.

The more I developed my own Mindfulness and Meditation practice, the more freedom and space came into my mind and body. I felt calmer, more able to cope with life’s daily demands, less panicky about the normal ups and downs of health, family, work and life in general. I felt I developed more control over my reactions to life’s stimuli. This just happened the more I adopted a mindful approach to living.

As time went on, I realised that I had so many of the resources I needed for my own recovery and daily life inside of my body. I developed a strength in knowing and in using my breath as my anchor to relieve stress, anxiety, fear and panic. I used simple breathing techniques to slow down my heart rate and to slow down and relax my breathing rhythm. Daily Meditation, even for just 10 minutes, helped to create a calm space in my mind and body. Mostly, I would just sit in a quiet room, in my own presence, listening to and connecting with my own breath.

I found that using these internal resources helped me to increase the volume of tools in my mindful toolbox. I discovered that engaging my breathing effectively during each day, particularly at times of heightened stress and anxiety, created a feeling as if someone had opened the valve of a balloon and let some much-needed air release outwards. It took so much pressure out of that balloon. Using daily Meditation became my new ‘rest and restore’. Before this, at some of my lowest points, I found it hard to get through the day without having to sleep for at least an hour. I was exhausted and felt I needed this rest time for recovery. But the more I meditated in the quietness and stillness of my own breath and heartbeat, the more rested I felt and as if I had slept for hours. It gave me a new sense and feeling of empowered energy and zest for life.

The most powerful point in my life was the realisation that ‘EVERYTHING I need is already WITHIN me’. This realisation came only when I stripped back my whole life, when I assessed every element and part of my life. This included determining which parts of my life were working for me and which parts were slowly destroying me. I became personally empowered with the ability to have so much control and choice over my health and well-being and of how I wanted to pursue forward in my life.

I soon realised that all I need in my life is for my heart to beat and my lungs to breathe. Every day that this happens independently is a joyous day and a reason to celebrate and express immense gratitude. Anything else in my life after these gifts are a bonus to be blessed with. I
became confident in the practice of using my breath as the gateway to the life of calm, peace, serenity, fun and laughter that I was continuously chasing for the previous 10-15 years.

Once we have the foundations and core of our existence functioning, these being our beating heart and our breathing lungs, which in turn operate the other systems in our bodies, everything else can be determined by our own choices, by our own power, by our own internal strength and abilities. This realisation is truly life transforming. Having a set of coping techniques in our mindful toolbox is incredible. You can constantly add to your existing internal resources by building up your mindful tools, which you always have access to . You don’t even have to remember to bring them with you! You have your coping techniques internally to use at any given moment and particularly during stressful and anxious times.

The feeling of no longer needing to find somebody else to ‘fix you’ is incredible. The safety in the knowledge that you don’t need to ‘fix yourself’ is truly empowering. You can adopt a mindful approach to living that will help you to live alongside whatever shadows are chasing you. The shadows will become less frightening and more manageable. Developing and nurturing a deep sense of internal resilience and stable strength will empower and encourage you beyond your expectations.

Once you start to believe, practice and instil the belief that ‘EVERYTHING you need is already WITHIN you’, you will experience immense internal and external courage, strength and gratitude that can help you to become the very best version of yourself!

Leona McDonnell

(Published in the Westmeath Examiner on 12/5/2020 and The Meath Chronicle and The Anglo Celt on 13/5/2020)

Weeding and pruning our mind? Strange concept? Think about what makes a really ‘good gardener’ for a physical outdoor garden. Someone who can plan, can prepare an area, can visualise, who is skilled at what they do and who is knowledgeable about what foliage will be compatible and flourish in a shared space? Now let’s apply that concept to our mind.

But how can we compare our mind to that of a physical garden? Can we apply the same thinking, the same principals of having a ‘good gardener’ for our mind? Absolutely! A ‘good gardener’ will analyse and assess the physical space that they must work with. They will then carefully choose what flowers, plants, seeds, shrubs and trees they wish to grow in this space. They will carefully care for and nurture these planted seeds to blossom. They will continually prune and weed this garden space to ensure that it has the best possible environment for these seeds to grow in. We can do the same and become very ‘good gardener’s’ of our own mind.

Think of yourself as that competent and knowledgeable gardener of your mind. You have the choice to decide what kind of seeds or thoughts you wish to plant in your mind garden. You have the preference of where you wish to plant these thought seeds so that they will work in unison with any additional thought seeds that you want to sow in your mind garden or any that may be deeply rooted in your mind garden already. You can choose how much time you wish to invest into the design and planning stage of your mind garden, how much time you want to spend nurturing and caring for it and how favourable you want the environment to be for growth and bloom. You can decide when to start preparing your mind garden for the seeding and planting stage. You as the gardener of your mind have full capacity to make all these decisions. You can become skilled at looking deeply below and far beyond the surface of your mind garden. You can develop the ability to see the beauty and the delicate way that your mind garden can be nourished to bloom, to blossom, to shedding and to restoration, just like the seasons of nature. Planting, seeding and growth in Spring, full bloom and blossom in Summer, harvest, shedding and letting go in Autumn and a recline back inward for rest and repair in Winter.

The most beautiful and empowering thing is that we can be the gardener of our own mind. We can choose to plant thought seeds that will ultimately empower, encourage and help us to grow personally and to achieve a mind garden that is calm, peaceful, serene and full of natural beauty. We may also now have additional time to invest into our mind gardens. How many of us have taken to planting, pruning, trimming and weeding in our own physical outdoor gardens in recent weeks? How many of us love to nourish, nurture and maintain our physical gardens because they uplift us and help us to feel more peaceful, relaxed and soothed when we look at them? How many of us also find ourselves comparing our own physical gardens to our neighbour’s gardens watching and wondering what they have decided to plant and seed in theirs?

Today, you can start or choose to design or re-design your own mind garden. You may ask “but how do I do this?” “Where do I start?” You may feel so overwhelmed trying to control or gaining control over your mind garden. So many of us feel that our mind gardens are completely overgrown and overrun with weeds over these last few weeks. We feel that it is getting harder to maintain control over our unruly mind gardens as each day goes on. The answer to these questions is simple, you start at the start and slowly take one stage at a time.

Firstly, you need to remove any thought weeds or overgrowth that is blocking your ability to see and think clearly. You need to remove any of these non-nourishing and wrecking thought weeds by pulling them out. As you pull each one out, feel the physical relief of being able to toss that thought weed to the side, declaring that you don’t need or want it anymore. Some of these thought weeds will come out or pop out quite easily but you may have to continue to encourage and slowly extract a few deeper-rooted weeds. You may even have to dig around or dig out some of these stubborn thought weeds. You might also choose to do a little each day, take a break and come back. The overall weeding stage may be too overwhelming to complete all together. You can ask yourself, is this thought weed serving me well? Do I want to hold onto this thought weed? If the answer is yes, ask yourself why you want to keep this thought weed in your mind garden, what purpose does it have? If the answer is no, then get rid of it, don’t give it any more energy or a favourable environment to grow in. Yes, the weeding stage can be quite uncomfortable. That feeling of unrest in the unknown of what lurks beneath each weed that you pull, of what will potentially surface as you extract the weed. You may get some bruises, cuts, stings maybe even thorns but these don’t last forever, they are only temporary. These will all heal as will the physical hole where the weed was rooted. Think of this phase as getting your Spring garden ready. You are cleaning, clearing and making room for your summer garden.

So, what would you like your summer garden to look and feel like? Full of colour, of beautiful scents, of bloom, of birds, bees and insects? Having carefully planned, assessed, visualised and implemented your Spring mind garden, your Summer mind garden is bound to be bursting with encouragement, empowerment, hope, life and positivity. Having had the belief of what your Spring garden would flourish into, the patience to watch as your planted seeds matured and grew, you now can reap the rewards of the time and effort that you invested into your Spring garden. Just like at harvest time in Autumn, gardeners and fruit farmers are literally rewarded for the fruits of their labour with beautiful crops of healthy fruits and vegetables. They can measure and quantify the success of their investment into their Spring and Summer gardens by their bountiful crops. They have reaped the benefits for what they have sown.

When we think of Autumn and our physical gardens, we see a letting go and shedding by flowers, plants and trees. After the long bright summer days and warmer temperatures, nature is more than ready to let go of what it doesn’t want to be carrying into its Winter garden.
We also have the ultimate power and decision as to what we want to let go from our Spring, Summer and Autumn mind gardens. What do we want to shed? What are we no longer willing to hold onto? People often ask me “but how do I let go?”. I tell them to ask themselves “is this thought helpful?” Most of the time the answer will be no. I then tell them to say to themselves “I give myself permission to let go” and then feel the mental, emotional and physical relief of letting go. Do you think a tree struggles with the decision of whether to let go of that one or any leaves during shedding? Why would the tree need to hold onto those leaves if they have already served their purpose? What’s the point in holding onto something that no longer has life, something that is now finished with? Our Autumn mind garden should be a place and time of complete shedding, for completely letting go, for baring ourselves and our thoughts. Knowing that it’s a natural part of the cycle of nature to release, to feel light and free but also to feel solid in our statue and presence as we do so.

When we think of our physical Winter gardens, not much happens above the surface. It’s a time of rest, repair, solitude, hibernation and internal recovery. Here is when we may see the skill of a good mind gardener. Not to physically push, not to emotionally demand, not to overstretch, not to ignore the natural beauty and rhythm of the earthly cycles. Being prepared and capable of fully embracing this period of stillness, of internal recovery, of inner repair and of personal growth. Resting in the stillness and quiet above the earth’s surface but safe and secure in the knowledge of growth and deep rooting below its surface. We too need periods of rest, repair, recovery and internal regeneration in our mind gardens.

The key to achieving a mind garden full of hope, light-heartedness, encouragement, empowerment and positivity is in the realisation that we do have ‘full’ control over the choices of our thought seeds, over how much time, energy and love we want to invest into our mind gardens. We also have ‘full’ control over how over-grown or out of control we are willing to let our mind gardens become, over how willing we are to give our mind gardens much needed rest and recovery time to repair and renew. Influencing our thought seeds like this means that we are sure to build a mind garden that will sway with the wind and rain but will also remain stable, deeply rooted and solid in stormy conditions.

The questions I would like to leave you with are “how do you want your mind garden to grow?” What better time than now to pause, review and ponder over whether you would like to create, re-design or re-plan your own mind garden? Perhaps using this time would be seen by a ‘good gardener’ as the ultimate opportunity to invest extra time, commitment and energy into developing a garden of your dreams.

(Published in the Westmeath Examiner on 21-4-2020 and in The Anglo Celt and Meath Chronicle on 22-4-2020)