Symbiosis: Heart of the Gardens
The answer to all these questions is that we must first approach our cardiovascular system by looking at the whole body, and not the individual parts. After a lifetime of physical, mental, and emotional accumulation in our bodies, we must learn the hard truth that there are no definitive or linear “cause and effects” when it comes to health. And there are no definitive “cures” or “solutions” either. In other words, we must take all the necessary steps and then some, to better our whole selves. Our everyday practice and overall lifestyle (diet, rest, hydration, exercise, breathwork, spiritual practice, etc.) is directly responsible for the level of health, joy, and performance that we experience in our lives, which is inclusive of the health of our heart.
We have learned that the health of our medicine gardens is a mirror image of that same interdependence. As the garden systems are engineered, built and nurtured, we are able to cultivate more vibrancy, life, and medicine within them. Our garden permaculture systems rise and fall collectively, including nursery, compost tea, worm farm, soil building, ground covers, border guilds, shade canopies, companion planting, pruning, mulching, and harvesting. For example, the Compost Tea cannot be made without mowing and collecting the nitrogen-rich grass and feeding it to the worms. Our soil fertility is greatly enhanced by the nutrient rich coconut husks we grow, harvest and shred into fine fibers. The roots of our young nursery plants are carefully coated with freshly harvested aloe gel prior to planting to increase hydration during its initiation into our vast medicine gardens.
The same symbiotic relationships are true within the human body. The health of our cardiovascular system is a function of many variables all working in the collective. The heart relies equally upon the purity of our blood to nourish it, the oxygen of our breath to maintain calm, and the defense of our immune system to strengthen it. As the collective rises in its performance, a symbiotic relationship amongst the individual systems of the body, mind and spirit are experienced.
In order to achieve such foundational balance, we must have access to a medicine cabinet overflowing with diverse and nutrient dense vitamins and minerals derived organically from mother nature. Such true wealth of the earth’s multi-dimensional prosperity inevitably fosters universal circulation, consciousness, and bliss. For centuries, humans have utilized alkalizing plant medicine to engineer, build, and experience such wealth. We have learned to cleanse our bodies of toxic inflammation with the golden rhizome of the Turmeric root, to promote circulation with the magnetic electricity of the Noni Leaf, to be innately sensitive to our hearts with the healing powers of Cacao, to balance our blood sugars with the alkalinity of the Mulberry Leaf, to nourish our muscles with the high protein bio-availability of the Moringa leaves, and to create awareness through a calm breath with the profound spiritual powers of the Queen of herbs, Tulsi.
We become conscious of the interdependence of the land and the health of our hearts. The banana fruits provide our body with potassium and phosphorous while the valuable stalks fertilize the gardens with similarly precious vitamins and minerals. After the Moringa leaves are cured into high vibrational teas and superfood spices for our medicine cabinet, the branches and twigs are chipped into mulch to nourish our gardens in a similar symbiotic manner. The synchronicities are everywhere as the garden and human life are clearly interdependent for vitality as well. We are all symbiotically one.
