Garden Yoga

Funny I hadn't mentioned yoga in this blog before, the essential silent partner of the gardener and the cook, fundamental to the Holy Trinity of body, mind, and spirit. Too esoteric for a food blog or is my catholic girlhood rearing its head again?

No need preaching to the choir about the benefits of growing your own organic food and living la vida yoga. What’s not to love about health and eating well? Yoga practice nourishes and shapes the mountain goat agility I need to maneuver around the terraced obstacle course of my mountain garden/construction zone. Even in comfortable shoes (the secret to a happy life) it takes the flexibility and balance of a yogi to circumvent exposed gutter tubes, abandoned cables, hoses, loose gravel, shaky ground, gopher holes, random tools, and debris left by the construction crew. Often while standing one legged on the edge of a 5 foot retaining wall I'll slip into Virabhadransana, Warrior 3 pose, then ease into drishti, a gazing technique to improve concentration. Reaching for that bean on the highest part of the vine I inhale into yoga mind, exhale, and go deeper into the stretch. Core strength for double digging? Yoga delivers.

I twisted my ankle recently, no bloody drama, just getting up from my desk, a simple accident in the home. Such an irony considering all the precarious places my moccasins walk. "It’s So Easy To Slip," (thank you for that song Bob Weir) you eat healthy, exercise, maintain the right attitudes and then stumble upon your own self. It is only a foot after all, plenty more functional body parts in this package, but the injury has left me practicing yoga and gardening in a gimpy format. Aside from the vanity plummet of poor form, hobbling about has heightened my awareness of the body, mind, spirit connection, recalling once again that the Mindfulness of yoga is what brings it all home. 

In or out of the garden, always changing, always the same;

Let go of what was going on before.

Let go of what will be going on later.

Be in this present moment,

 and BREATH...

as if your life depended on it.