Plants have always been fascinating; how they grow, change shape, and move to the beat of their own drum is a phenomenon.
How they graciously ask for more water when they’re thirsty and could use some love is a beautiful boundary, they communicate.
As I’ve developed a closer relationship with plants over the years, I’ve noted some of their benefits.
Can you relate to any? If so, be sure to comment on how you and plants interact.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
1. Allergy Improvement
When I first moved to where I live now, I would never admit it aloud, but I had allergies.
Whatever the case, I would not go on medication to save my life. I believed in holistic supplements, a wholesome diet, and optimism.
Once I added more plants to my home, I noticed an immediate improvement in the air quality and alleviation of my aggravated sinuses; they felt astronomically better.
Who knew?
2. Forces Me To Stay Present
Recently I had a plant session where I was clipping and cleaning off all the dead parts of the plants. In addition, I watered them and showered them with love. It was one of the most meditative practices I’ve probably ever done.
About a whole hour flew by in what felt like an instant. The whole time, I thought of nothing except the plants.
We all have those unique activities that make us forget about everything and everyone. We should visit those practices often to help us stay present, which is the foundation of peace, joy, gratitude, and contentment.
3. A Positive Mental Health Outlet
Not only does tending to the plants help me stay present, which is a decisive benefit for my mental health, but it brings me peace, clarity, and healing.
Something about helping a living thing grow and live a better life is clarifying and empowering to my soul.
Do you feel that when you’re tending to your plants?
4. Offers A Symbolic Ritual
Pruning the plants is something we should all do in our lives.
Add nutrients.
Water the plant.
Remove the wrong soil.
Remove the dead leaves.
Remove the parts that are blocking the pathways to growth.
All of these activities are a form of self-love and self-care for a plant.
Conducting the same practices in your life would have considerable benefits, too.
Add Nutrients: Read, watch, or listen to positive and elevating content. Surround yourself with positively nutritious people.
Water The Plant: Exercise, eat healthy, speak affirmations aloud, and engage in activities that make you happy and warm your soul. Set healthy boundaries with others.
Remove The Bad Soil: Graciously let go of the unhealthy people, habits, and thoughts that negatively affect your life. Forgive yourself for any mistakes and decisions that hurt you or others.
Remove The Dead Leaves: Surrender to the parts of yourself that need to go (e.g., unproductive thinking, unhealthy or harmful habits, limited beliefs, negativity, etc.).
Remove Blockages: Analyze your life, do your shadow work, seek therapy, practice meditation, journal, and do the work to help surface pains, unconscious thoughts, and painful memories to experience holistic healing.
5. Softens The Heart & The Hands
Even those with complex hearts can’t stay too hard while caring for a plant.
If you’re not delicate enough, you may damage the plant, the leaves, or the soil.
Loving and caring for a living thing gets you outside yourself and displaces hardness with softness.
It helps you to experience love within yourself.
When you give, you receive.
6. Alleviates Stress
A cure for stress is to get out of your world, for this is where the stress originates: the mind.
If you can get outside your head and body for only a minute, you will feel liberated, whole, and tranquil.
7. Add Euphoria
I’ve never described myself as a happy person. I fall closer to the emotion of contentment.
But when I tend to plants and look at them, I experience this peculiar feeling of euphoria.
It’s a unique feeling I’m embracing and allowing into my life.
8. Meaning
Life outside of yourself is powerful. When we focus not only on ourselves but on others, we experience a shift.
Narcisim, selfishness, and other self-centeredness keep us locked inside our heads and worlds.
We end up missing out on a lot life has to offer.
It’s also why I’m grateful for my dogs. Caring for them adds meaning to my life.
Sharing love is the ultimate form of giving.
9. Death & Life Are One
When I returned from a long trip, all my plants looked dead (they felt dead and looked burnt, too) — they weren’t having it while I was gone.
I decided not to give up on them and tended to them for several days, and they slowly started returning to life.
It’s wild, but they looked better after their healing than before I left.
Sometimes parts of ourselves die, so we can birth new parts of ourselves that have been waiting to breathe.
But the old parts must be eliminated so the new parts can surface.
What parts of yourself need to be eliminated?
10. Beauty
Where there is life, there is beauty.
Where there are plants, there is greenery, which is worth seeing.
I wake up to plants.
I go to sleep to plants.
They are everywhere, and I love it.
The more beauty you can have in your life, the better.
Recommended Read:
The Power Of Plant Therapy For Mental Health: Surround yourself with life and tend to the plant
This was a beautiful read on plants. I learned a great deal on the value of plants.
Thank you.