Ep.31 Three Steps Plants Want You to Take in Challenging Times

Welcome to ReConnect with Plant Wisdom. I am your host, Tigrilla Gardenia, Nature-Inspired Mentor and Leadership Coach. In this podcast, I share ancient and modern knowledge, from biology to spirituality, about the wondrous ways plants can help you lead a Naturally Conscious Life.

I am so happy to be here with you today. It’s been somewhat of a challenging week now challenging times in lots of good ways. Just so many things happen. It’s as if everybody woke up in this fall. And as we’re tumbling through the days, it’s just been one fun-filled adventure after the other. So, but we’re here we’re here today we have an important topic that I want to talk to you about. I really want to talk about three steps that plants want you to take in challenging times. Now. You can say that this is a challenging time on the micro as well as on the macro scale of our planet. There is unrest at every level. In some aspects we’re going into the holiday season and the holiday season always brings a little extra angst to people even if you don’t necessarily celebrate. There’s travel there’s people on the move their stores that are overfilled there’s the end of the year and everything you thinking about you want it to accomplish this year. There’s just lots of stuff that happens and we’re about to head into the winter months. I mean, we’re kind of like concluding end of the season. And this season, as I’ve already talked about in the past is all about bringing in those elements to really just bring in everything that has nourished you everything that has been a learning lesson, everything that you have it have excelled with when we think about a plant and the fact that the leaves change colors and a deciduous plant what’s really happening is not that the plant is decaying on the stem, but what’s happening is the plant is pulling back, all of that nourishment, everything that can be useful to them during the winter months when they go into this more reflective stage is what I think of it. So they want to pull that out.

So what you’re seeing is those beautiful reds and browns and orange colors are all all that gets left in the leaves. So they’ve always been there, but they get left in the leaves because they’re not something that’s useful during the next season. And that’s where the leaf then falls down to the ground. So we’re really moving into that and we’re taking in a lot of information and it’s a lot it’s unfortunately easy for us to get caught up in the world turmoil that’s happening, you know, different kinds of conflicts and especially again in this season conflict seem to also rise. And so I really wanted to come here today to talk about these three steps that I’ve learned from the plants I this was a lesson from from plant from the plant kingdom really early on for me and it’s something that I have made almost a cannon when I feel like I’m in a crisis. I’m in a challenging moment, challenging times. of the world. When I feel overcome with you know any kind of grief or anxiety or fears that are happening. These are three things for you to really reflect on and I hope they can be as useful for you as they’ve been for me.

Again, if you need any support at all, please reach out to me like I want for you to feel like you have all the lifelines that you need right now for understanding and exploring and using a different you know, using alternative logics to get there. So you know, the naturally conscious community has been created especially for this and everything that I create for you is meant to give you new tools and new ways of looking at things and to help you reawaken that pleasantness and come into that much more natural way of being where these types of unrest are not seen as a definitive acts or something that’s really like seminal and, you know, changes you in some ways but more of the natural cycles and rhythms with their peaks and also their troughs that you can manage by focusing on your natural intelligence by understanding and connecting into your planets by having that ecosystem around you. So I want to really get into what are these three main steps? The first step is going to it.

Okay, here’s the thing sometimes as I’m planning out these, these podcasts and when I’m planning out my lessons, my master classes are any kind of the different programs that I put together is that I want them to sound revolutionary, you know, when you like, listen to a speaker and they’re like out of this world amazing and stuff, but the truth of the matter is that all of this, the true lessons that we need to embody and understand are so simple and that’s something that the natural world helps us understand plants operate via simple rules and look at the complexity, complexity, not complications, complexity in the beautiful way. Look at the complexity of colors and arrays and of behaviors and expressions that all come from very simple building blocks and from very simple rules. So what I’m looking to do is break things down into their most simplest ways of being, so that you don’t have to think in massive complications and 15 steps that you’re never going to be able to take. These are the building blocks of life and not only life of life that flourishes. Over millions and millions and millions of years. So they are going to be simple. They are going to be somewhat easy, and yet we’ve forgotten them. So I’m going to keep repeating them over and over and over again until we step back into that naturalness. That true nature and that we can then breathe together and realize that we’re all evolving and we’re all these amazing beings that are here in order to create something beautiful together. So so we’re going to start with number one. They ready for it. It’s super complicated. No, it’s not stop. That’s number one. The number one lesson that you that plants want you to take in challenging times is to stop. I know I’ve said it over and over again but it just keeps coming up and people just don’t keep doing it. You’re so busy. You’re running around, you’re focusing on what you don’t have. You’re thinking about all the things that are missing. You’re looking at all the conflict in the world. You’re you’re just getting caught up with everything that’s wrong.

Stop, stop, stop and reflect on what is here and now. Reflect on yourself. Reflect on the beauty around you. Reflect on the love and the harmony and all of the little steps that are being taken by yourself and by others in order to move forward in a way that we want to be living. Stop chasing behind all of what you don’t have and think about what you do have a plant doesn’t waste their energy panicking, they can’t, they can’t. Because when they do that they don’t have enough energy for other things. So they have to stop and reflect and take in and contemplate when they did studies into prehistoric culture. When you look at Hunter gatherers, for example, there’s this theory. That’s not a real theory. It’s a fake lore, to be honest that Hunter and gatherers were most likely extremely anxious because you know, they were gathering all the time. They were hustling and bustling and working so hard. They spent all this time trying to make sure that they got ahead because they never knew if the food was going to run out in the area that they were if they weren’t going to catch something. It’s actually not true. You know what hunter gatherer culture spent the majority of their time doing?

Sleeping, and caught and contemplating life. That’s what they did. They slept and they contemplated way more than you could think. Because it was that contemplation that allow them to have the great ideas so that they could start to test things and see what would work that they can become more efficient, because they could move more nimbly. They contemplated and we know this because from what we’ve gathered and studied, we understand that hunter gatherer cultures would hunt or gather both in a narrow window of time, right? They would maybe go for a few days and do a massive hunt, and then spend the next month just hanging out, just thinking, just taking care of each other. This is the basics of what is the economic model that had flourished for hundreds of 1000s of years. The idea of taking care of something and then sitting back and enjoying the fruits of that and we’ve lost it.

So what are we doing, we’re always worrying about our lack. We’re focusing on our lack rather than contemplating the best way for me to move forward to create that abundance creating knowing where my abundance is going to come from in a hunter gatherer culture. They were so adept at understanding their terrain, the knowledge what was around them, that they didn’t have to worry about where the next meal was going to come from. They knew that when they got ready for the for the hunt, that we’re going to be able to do that and spend a period of time a week or so hunting, and gathering I mean hunting and gathering all the thing needed in order for the rest of the time for them to relax and enjoy it. They knew their land, they knew where things were coming from. They knew how to make and create all these different elements that were important for their lives. And the rest of the time. They could experiment and they could play without that pressure. And we need to learn how to go back there. We need to stop chasing from a place of luck and we need to start moving from a place of a fulfillment of abundance of growth. And so the only way to do that is that when when the panic takes over when the fear start to lock is for you to stop whatever it is that you’re doing. That’s bringing that in and focus on your self focus on that natural intelligence that lies within you that is going to show you the way out you have to move into that we talk so much about this in the naturally conscious community all the different aspects and and with my coaching clients. I mean, that’s really the heart of what we do is how do they step back into that place of knowing a feeling of being rather than lacking and being afraid of not it’s not about fearing things that is not the emotion we want to like step into on a regular basis.

We want to use fear we want to have fear move us in some way. Sometimes that’s extremely important. But I don’t want to go into panic. I want to stop and be able to zero in on my true nature on what I know I am supposed to be doing and how do I best use all the knowledge all the tools everything that I have at my disposal, how I am aware how I am knowledgeable how I am you know adept at being able to adapt to whatever comes my way. So really focusing on and the other piece is really discovering part of that stopping is listening to yourself to listen for that life purpose. Because when I have my life purpose really clear and I know that I’m working on a path towards my life purpose. Yes, I know that there’s lots of crap happening in the world, but I also know that I’m doing my piece. I know that I am moving the needle forward and then I am contributing that my piece of the puzzle that is going to bring about the type of world that I want to live in. That’s going to change those paradigms that’s going to be acting for health and wellness and well being and all the other things and so if I chase anxiety, it’s because I feel disconnected from self. It’s because I feel disconnected from my own environment.

Plants are rooted there sessile they are stopping and observing. And from that place of observation and contemplation is where they can make their action plan. So remember last week in the last month in the last podcast, we talked about this, we talked about how important it is to set your roots and stopping is setting your roots. Let them come down into the ground. See where they have to go What resources can I pull up in order to deal with what’s happening and where instead? Am I supposed to orient myself for the days to come? So Stop, just stop and listen. So that’s that’s number one. Number two look for new models. I keep saying this over and over again. old models of living no longer work. That is the reason why we keep seeing crisis. All crisis are not necessarily bad crisis are sometimes a tipping point that allows for new creation to come into being it feels like a catastrophe when you’re in it. But it’s not always a catastrophe. Ignore the news. The news is always going to make it a catastrophe. It’s not always a catastrophe. Sometimes it is like the tower card. It is the fall of something in order for something new to come about. So when you are experiencing this type of crisis, it’s important for you to recognize that where we are on the planet today we’ve never been before. It’s all new. It’s all new. I know that it’s supposed to be all the same, but it is all the same in a way and it’s all new. It’s new because it’s this time it’s this moment. Y

ou are in this way you and everybody else is living in this time right now. Therefore, tomorrow has to be different. So you have to look for those models. We can’t use the old logic to solve the problems that got us here. Because it’s those old logics that are throwing us into that panic that are throwing us into that anxiety. We have to start pushing forward for a new paradigm a new model. So the old models that we have used in the planet are based on disconnection. Isolation dissection, the idea that we can learn by breaking things apart into the minut details. But the truth of the matter is, is that we live in a highly interconnected world. We live in a in a system that is constantly working one way or the other. By intersecting each other, adapting from one bringing it into another and flowing through this. Therefore what you do today, how you act today has the power to change and ripple out across to many different model different experiences and paradigms and programs and people and such like that. We are living in a series of interlocking ecosystems with these shared eco tones between them. So these points of concentration and so what you do in your ecosystem will affect other ecosystems. So that’s why you can take that time to stop and then you want to bring it in and then you want to think about how do your behaviors need to change. What is my characteristics that I need to bring to the forefront? What are my skills and talents and passions that I want to exalt that I want to enhance that I want to learn how to master because that is the way that I change my environment and then my environment since it’s a part of a greater ecosystem changes that greater ecosystem and everything starts to adapt to these models. ecosystems have a whole series of characteristics that we can really build from these are those new models that we need to look at, and that we need to work with, especially in times of crisis, right and this is where that first point becomes important stop and observe and contemplate, because then you can see how to apply those observations to the new models that are being created that are based on our more natural states. For example, all ecosystems work with a series of deep patterns that connect all the elements together.

This is also how we work hundreds and hundreds of passions that I could have in my lifetime. Lots of different things that I sometimes even want to do simultaneously. But one deep pattern, one element that I constantly am sharing out with the world, I can be somebody who helps contain energy, I can be somebody that generates energy. I could be a pillar upon which you can lean on. I could instead be someone that catalyzes change. I can be someone that helps change be absorbed. All of these are different types of deep patterns. ecosystems have them. So when you bring together different elements, your element fits in with all of the other elements around you to create a continuous thread that flows through them. And you can focus on that thread using whatever talents or skills or characteristics you want to but when you touch that thread, you affect the entire ecosystem, you have the opportunity to make change or ripple through. This is why understanding your life purpose. And your deep pattern is so incredibly important. Because if I stay true to my life purpose, while constantly changing the pattern, that means excuse me the characteristics of passions and the tools that I use, but funneling them through my element, my deep pattern, I have the ability to make my little world huge touch the whole entire planet. So focus on these elements, change the paradigm change the model that you use in harmony with who you are. The other thing about an ecosystem is that they have very simple rules to guide them.

Very simple rules. They don’t have a complex less than a list of do’s and don’ts. They have a rule set that is around the way that light moves through it the way that the what is it that they’re trying to accomplish as an overall ecosystem is ecosystem trying to stay warm is the ecosystem instead trying to embody coolness, like there’s lots of different simple rules that guide groupings of ecosystems or a species and such. And the other thing is that obviously, ecosystems are constantly adapting. So when you stop, you’re not halting that adaptation. You’re contemplating how you want to adapt. You’re bringing in all of the awareness, all of the knowledge of what’s going on, and then you’re filtering it through your element to understand how do you personally adapt. And then remember how I said last time, when I adapt my AI to my ecosystem, or to my environment, let’s say it this way, my environment then has to adapt to me. And there’s this constant flow and again, that ripples out. So look for the new models don’t stay stuck in the ways that you’ve always thought about it that are fear based. That are based on anxiety that are really pushing you back. Think about it from an ecosystem perspective, from a plant perspective and look for models that help you push your natural intelligence, your natural way of doing things and bringing that to life in order for it to have the ripple effects that it’s going to have.

I’m going to tell you now the third and for me one of the more the word I want to use. It’s the most innovative, innovative, innovative, innovative, that’s the word I’m looking for. Innovative of the three steps that the plants have taught me. But before I tell you about that, I want to first of all, let me just take a second to just thank you for your support every time you subscribe, or rate or share or like depending on where it is that you’re consuming this content. You give more people the opportunity to connect in and learn more about the way that plants operate, and how it is that plant wisdom can really help you in your life. So thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here for listening for sharing and for everything that you do in order to bring plants blindness to an end to end that plant. What is it plant disparity disorder, as they say and really bring us into an age of plant reawakening and of plants awareness. I am just forever grateful that I’m able to do this with you. And I also want to thank you for supporting the various eco conscious business partners that I bring with you that I bring in this in this podcast every week with every purchase you are supporting the great work that all of us are doing in order to spread the message of models of plants of everything that the plants want to share with us. So thank you again for being here. Thank you again for being a part of what we are creating and thank you for supporting eco conscious business partners like the one I’m going to share with you right now. The first time I connected with a plant and received a response it was like nothing I had ever felt before. It was such a life affirming sensation when you make a breakthrough like that and realize just how connected we are to all nature and the world around us. As a nature inspired mentor myself. I was so excited to stumble upon the shift network with their mission to empower a global network of evolutionary change agents, just my kind of movement. But there are so many inspiring leaders, healers, empaths and other visionaries all under one roof. There you can access some of the best transformational education, media and events on the planet. In the show notes I’ve included a link for you to browse everything the shift network has to offer. And this is to further your evolution process and reawaken. Your Full Potential. Check it out. Okay, so now I want to tell you the third step that the plants want you to take in these moments of crisis.

First stop, to look for new models old model wasn’t working, hence the anxiety hence all of the crisis management freak out. So let’s go to the third one, which is focus on the Eco tone. So let me be specific. An eco tone is a place of transition between two different kinds of biomes. Two kinds of ecosystems, right? It is where two ecosystems overlap. Now if you think about the fact that our entire planet is made up of overlapping ecosystems, in the space between each one of these overlapping ecosystems, you have what’s called an eco tone and these eco tones. For example, the area where land meets sea, right that shore it’s not exactly see because the sea is not there all the time. It’s not exactly land because though there’s water that’s coming through it, and it has a very specific biome that gets created in that eco tone. So that’s a great example or the area between a field and a forest right that edge between them. We’re starting to get better as human beings to see sort of the fact that things don’t just end and abruptly and something new starts but instead, there are these places in between them. And these are really important spaces, especially for long term systemic change. It is in these eco tones where real change happens. So this is the place where I really love to look and play in order to create where is it that my area of expertise, if I’m thinking about it, from a human perspective, meets up with your area of expertise, where did these two overlap so it’s the space that they work well together. Where over here I am fully what I am you over here are fully where you are. And this is that place where we’re kind of a little bit of each other. And in this place is a space where lots of magic happens and can happen. So sometimes it’s called the edge effect, right? This is the place where individuals or communities or physical systems they they can adapt the fastest because again, they’re always used to being they’re always used to experiencing what’s happening on the other side of so there is a place of high adaptation. It’s also a place where you can develop new and unique ideas because since multiple talents are multiple characteristics are coming through, think about again that ocean model right?

So if you have a creature that or that is coming from the sea, but can actually breathe air, this is the place where they can like look for food or expand on new behaviors. They could try other things out because there’s just enough water to protect them but there’s also enough land for them to go and explore through the sand and have these different things. So there’s lots of unique features that happen only in an eco tone that’s very different from the ecosystems in which they came from. Because it requires the marriage of these two in order for those features to be able to to exist. So there’s there’s a lot of diversity. You can say there’s a lot of diversity. There’s a lot of reciprocity in Eco tones. There’s also a lot of symbiotic connections and interactions that happen because again, they’re using the elements from both of the biomes from both of the two skills that are on the each side of them. So that is it. It’s also something that can be created right in, in a cultural environment in a business environment, especially that can be done for example, as many of you know, I am Cuban American. I was born and raised me in the US. My parents are Cuban, but I was growing. I grew up in Miami, Florida, which is basically North Cuba. And it’s an amazing eco tone in reality. I mean especially when I was growing up, it was absolutely an eco tone. So much so that the Cuban population is considered in the United States the fastest integrating culture in all of the United States and fastest integrating meaning the one where the culture most quickly was able to become prominent business owners, they were able to go into politics, able to really step into the types of roles that usually take an established culture or you know, they just move through maybe some of the biases or some of the unfortunately racism and many other aspects that the Cuban American population has been able to, in less than 50 years was able to very quickly step in to prominent roles in the United States from many different kinds of levels, business and politics and all kinds of other things. Cultural and Spiritual and stuff like that. Why? Because when the Cubans arrived in Miami, rather than completely adapting and negating their Cuban Ness, right, like losing the language, the culture, the food and all these types of things. They decided to create an eco tone and this was really fascinating.

I’ve had lots of conversations with my mother about this topic, my mother and my godparents and lots of other you know, friends and family that we’ve talked about what it was about our generation, my first generation American family, what is it that made us really Cuban American rather than just American or just Cuban and it is that we are really unequal tone culture. We’re a culture that fully embraced the areas that came from both and so we kind of you know, we both we all speak the language I mean, I was taught Spanish and then English. I went to a bilingual school but not bilingual bicultural. School, where I was able to fully enjoy the Fourth of July and in the other half cmrt Like I was able to really live all aspects of you know, American music and Cuban music and I was able to live American food and Cuban food and this culture, this, this eco tone that allowed us to start to create some of the things that really only exist in our culture, some unique ways in which we were able to bring into, for example, American politics, this different sort of point of view that comes from an immigrant culture that has adapted without fully losing. So we are neither an invasive species, nor did we get forgotten and left upon. So this is a cultural eco tone that got created and there’s many other kinds of eco tones. So these types of eco tones really give this opportunity to explore those new paradigms and those new models that I talked about in number two. So in our number three, we focus on the Eco tone, look for the Eco tone based on whatever it is that you are experience. If the crisis is a business crisis, where is the place of greatest innovation, where is it the place where multiple ideas are coming together, and I have the ability to be diverse and change the model within it. If it is something that’s coming from a political or cultural perspective, don’t look to throw yourself deeper into one of the specific sides because most likely those are the ones that are generating the anxiety or generating the crisis or generating the problem. Look instead to move into the Eco tone the space in between so that you can better understand the way that you can move between these two and what direction you want to move.

Sometimes ecosystems are really great for you to try things out and then take that into one of the biospheres of the Ecosa ecosystems that are on either side. So it’s a playground, it’s a melting pot. It’s a place of experimentation and innovation, which is extremely useful when you have a crisis. So So those are the three steps that plants really want you to take. Step number one, stop and contemplate. Step number two, look for new models. The old models aren’t working for you. The old models aren’t working around the way that you’re experiencing whatever this crisis is, is not working. Look for the new way and three is focus on the Eco tone, look for the space of greatest diversity, greatest experimentation for you to find the right adaptation or the right implementation that is going to work for you. I want to hear what you think about this. Do you think that these are three steps that you could take in a moment of necessity or of crisis? Is this something that you feel like you can easily apply to the greater situation of unrest that’s happening in our planet? And how would you apply this using your own life? I’d love to hear about this. So please feel free to leave me a comment. Or of course, you can always join the conversation in the naturally conscious community. These are the places where we are having these types of conversations that are going on the naturally conscious community is your is the only really the only ecosystem that exists online for you to have these types of conversations for us to talk about this plant knowledge and how we are applying this to our day to day lives. This is a place for pure collaboration between humans and plants and I would love for you to be a part of this conversation. So I hope to see you there. Until next time, resist the urge to hold back your evolving green brilliance. This is me Tigrilla Gardenia, bye

Thanks for listening to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom, Intro and Outro Music by Steve Shuli and poinsettia from the singing Life of Plants. So join me to give you like our Dania and my plant collaborators next time on reconnect with plant wisdom