Wellness from Within

by Kathy Gaskin, THG Founding Board Member

This piece was spoken by Kathy at our February 2024 Strategic Vision Launch Party. Wellness from Within is one of our 5 vision goals. Stay tuned for future blogs in which we share more on each goal.

One of my passions is holding council circles, a space to feel deeply connected with others and with life through the practice of listening and speaking from our hearts.  Another passion is being a homesteader; living off-grid, everyday I am learning how to live a little more aligned with the elements that sustain me, and feel the endless strength and insight that nature provides. 

When I was first thinking about describing the phrase “Wellness from Within,” I was flooded with memories of the many days and nights I spent journaling as a young person, filling pages mostly with questions – grappling with what life is all about and how I wanted to live mine, how I wanted to feel as I moved through the world, wondering what my purpose was going to become.  I’ve come to realize that these inquiries have stayed close to my heart and guided me along some of the most stunning, rocky, flowing, and dense paths of my life.  They have crafted my understanding of what it is to be whole. 

So, in this moment, I would describe Wellness from Within as having a very closely knit relationship with ourselves, a relationship filled with questions.  Questions like – What does this pounding feeling in my chest mean?  Where do my thoughts come from and how am I choosing to respond to them?  How do I express the truth of how I feel?  Where does my spirit reside, truly? (There are SO many questions we can ask!)

The more I kept asking myself questions like these, the more intimacy I noticed developing deep within my heart.  I eventually discovered that this was the space for gathering real understanding of the world around me, and within me.  My path led me through a very wide doorway into studying the interconnected relationship between the health of the natural world and the health of not just my body but also my mind and spirit.  There is an intricate connection between the intelligence of our heart, the wisdom of the natural world, and the health of our body and mind. 

I dove in deep and uncovered a lot of buried and unconscious conditioning to find important answers about what kind of participant I wanted to be in the world.  The process of really getting to know myself wasn’t always easy (it still isn’t always easy) – I’ve had to face some hard truths and feel through some really difficult experiences.  But the journey has been transformational in really knowing that there are vast amounts of resources contained within my own body and heart to support caring for my overall health.

The Healing Garden is on a gorgeous journey to open the doors wide to this understanding that we each have within us so many resources and innate intelligence to support our wellbeing.  They are accessible to us everyday.  I.E. When I feel challenged, or stressed, or notice my heart racing, or a tightness in my throat, I can choose to take a few longer breaths and simply notice my feet grounded to the earth.  I can take a moment to feel my heart, really feel it pulsing life through me.  I can give myself permission to take time to soak up the calming and strengthening energy of the air around me.  And then I can remind myself how I want to feel in this next moment. 

It is a practice to know ourselves more intimately. It is not something most of us are taught to know very well, if at all. I was taught to bypass it; it was a foreign concept in my upbringing.  And I am still amazed by the forces of nature that kept presenting messages to remind me that if I kept connecting to my heart, to the core of my existence, I would know what aliveness and wellness was really like – really like to live it, to feel it, and to share it. 

So while this vision is big (as it should be with how expansive we are as living beings in this time and space), the practice is simple, and the gifts are great.  I invite you to start with asking yourself just a question or two about how you want to feel in your life.  Stay curious.  Investigate.  Trust the subtle, yet remarkable, intuitive voice that begs your attention.  Be open to the amazing possibilities that reside in your heart, in that place that knows best. Take an even deeper breath.  Do a body scan and give attention to all the sensations that emerge.  Soften your thoughts.  Soften your heart.  Practice.  Then ask more questions.  “What does it feel like to be in my body?  What does it feel like to trust my heart?  How do I want to move through this precious life I’ve been given?”

We, as co-creating members of The Healing Garden, also practice and encourage this invitation for ourselves.  It is a gift to spend time listening to our hearts and communicating from that space.  The more we open to our own internal sources of healing, the more we offer our heart-felt presence to one another, and in turn, we continue to tend to our inner atmosphere.