How do you feel when you are in a room surrounded by plants? Is it a different feeling than walking outdoors on a nature trail surrounded by nature’s bounty? I do not know about you but that walk always centers me. It brings me to a place of deep silence if I am alone and a very close connection with the person I am walking with. Often what we share together is intimate and personal in our conversation as we walk.
There is something about the natural world that creates an opening into our soul’s voice.
I believe in the power of positive self-talk. When you are walking inside a forested landscape, try to be kinder to yourself. Be less afraid. Be wiser. Trust yourself.
Plants brought indoor help to create that sense of the natural world for us each day. And once we tap into the energy they hold for us in creating spaces that heal, we can begin to release our inner demons, surrender our pain, and let go of all the anxiety that holds us hostage late at night when we cannot sleep.
The natural world is where things started. Whatever your beliefs, the power of growth, survival, food and the abundant colors that plants and trees and ground covers give us is what we can learn to appreciate. We can simply be one with the unknown.
We can learn to trust the way the natural world holds a power and a presence over us. And we can surrender to that power.
Walking in nature allows you to be one with the mystery and power of the forest. As you sit indoors surrounded by your favorite plants or cut flowers or witnessing the beauty of colors and seasonal transformation outside in your own garden, try to pause. Close your eyes. Remember the colors and the smells and the shapes of the most precious plants.
Be grateful.
Allow that gratitude to envelope you and allow that energy to cycle back to the plants, the garden, the house plants and the many large old growth trees, tiny new saplings and the highly vigorous growth that swallows you.
Release fear.
Accept serenity into your life.
Hold hope for greater good among us.
If you are curious about the colors and the way plants give meaning to us in other ways, plan to register for the artist and master gardener’s workshop, Katie Spencer, at Kumari of the Woods on Sunday October 18th from 2-4 pm. Katie is from a family of gardeners and artists and she brings her gifts to her teaching in this workshop: Making Natural Color from Highly Vigorous Plants.
Katie will teach you to safely process barberry, buckthorn, and lady’s bedstraw into dyes for wool, silk, cotton, and linen. Participants will leave with a “reference sheet” of the different dyes on cotton & linen samples to use for future projects.
The workshop is only $50 and Katie will answer many questions and be ready to correspond with you before and following the class. Register here online.
The workshop is held at the Cottage Grace at Kumari of the Woods and you will experience the beauty of our forest as you learn from Katie.
We are grateful to welcome Katie to our woods and hope to see you in our forest, too!
Kumari Patricia