I’ve spent enough time working in the garden to learn something that apparently took me years to figure out about my own body.
You can’t rush everything.
You can’t plant a tomato, stand over it the next morning and say, “Okay, let’s see some progress.”
Well, you can.
The tomato doesn’t give a damn. 😂
You give it decent soil. Water. Sunlight. A little attention. Then you come back tomorrow and do it again.
Bodies aren’t all that different.
We tend to want immediate results from them.
My back is tight. Fix it.
I started exercising Tuesday. Why don’t I feel better Thursday?
I’ve been eating differently for six days. Where’s my new body?
We push harder because we assume harder must work faster.
After years of teaching movement and working on my own assorted collection of formerly unhappy body parts, I’ve become much more interested in consistency than urgency.
There’s another lesson the garden has taught me.
When the work is done, let it be done.
I can spend hours outside digging, bending, carrying things, squatting, pulling weeds and generally discovering muscles I apparently forgot I owned.
Then I could walk straight inside, sit down at the computer and carry all that physical and mental momentum with me.
Or I can take a few minutes and shift gears.
I do some gentle movement.
I breathe.
I let my shoulders drop.
Nothing mystical is happening.
I’m simply giving myself a little space between what I was doing and what I’m about to do.
I’ve come to appreciate those transitions.
We have them all day long.
Work to home.
Computer to dinner.
Teaching to resting.
An irritating conversation to the person who had absolutely nothing to do with it.
That last one might be worth paying attention to. 😄
Sometimes we carry one part of our day straight into the next and don’t even realize we’re doing it.
Try This Today
When you finish whatever counts as work today, don’t immediately rush into the next thing.
Give yourself two minutes.
Walk around. Stretch a little. Take three slow breaths. Look outside.
Then move on.
You don’t have to call it a protocol.
It’s just a pause.
And while you’re at it, remember the tomato.
Give your body what it needs. Keep showing up. And quit digging it up every three days to see whether it’s working.