Ep.115 Plant Your Hidden Seeds: Turning Fear into Fertile Soil

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Hello, hello, hello, everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Reconnect With Plant Wisdom.

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It’s me, Tigrilla Gardenia.

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So, or as they say in Italian, “Allora.”

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If you’ve ever been to Italy, you’ve probably heard that word a thousand and one times.

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It’s like the Italians’ favorite word.

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Allora.

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So I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and as I was putting together this episode, I was trying to, you know, every time I sit here and I think what is the topic that I- is, is kind of most important to talk about right now.

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And it’s, it’s a challenging moment to even discover your own thoughts.

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In other words, the, the world feels a little loud.

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L- loud, that’s, that’s the only word that keeps coming to my mind, it’s like it’s louder than usual.

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One minute you’re kind of scrolling past climate doom headlines, the next you’re in a room full of people and everybody is, like, going and your social battery is slowly, um, diminishing or, you know, discharging.

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It’s, it’s really tempting to look at the world through the lens of anxiety and think to yourself, “Why should I even bother?”

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Like, “Why should I bother sharing my gifts right now?

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Why should I bother putting myself out there?

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It’s just better to keep everything kind of sitting on a little shelf until things settle down.”

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I hear this over and over again from my clients and my friends, that they just kind of feel like right now there’s just so much that their own voice is just a drop in the bucket, so what’s the point?

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And I, every time they’re talking to me about this, I get this picture of, of, of little seed packets, right?

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So everybody putting all their gifts, like taking a little packet out and putting all your gifts, which are these seeds of potential, that, and then you, you close them up.

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It reminds me of a good friend of mine who used to do a lot of seed swapping.

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She still does actually, and I love it.

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She has, I remember I used to help her sometimes.

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Like, she would collect all these seeds from her food forest and we would put them in these little, um, envelopes and she would mail them out to other people.

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And I can imagine people receiving these and each one of those seeds is filled with this, you know, unexpected, unknown potential, this gift that you have, and then they just put them up on a shelf.

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And I feel like tons of people are doing that with themselves right now.

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They’re, they’re taking all of their abilities and their skills and their talents and the things that they want to achieve and accomplish in the world, and they’re saying, “You know what?

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The world is so loud right now and there’s so much going on, and, and not all of it is so beautiful, I’m just gonna throw it inside this little seed packet and I’m gonna put it there.”

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And it’s safe, sure, m- but it’s also never becoming whatever it is that those seeds are supposed to become, whether that be a forest or individual plants or whatever it might be.

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And, and it’s funny because recently I’ve tried to sow a few seeds, and as I’ve been noodling around on this topic, and th- a lot of them haven’t come, like, haven’t come up.

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But I think it’s because, not because anything is wrong with the seeds, but it’s more like my mind has been looking at this from through that metaphor.

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And then all of a sudden you have this, I have this one pot that I threw a few little seeds in and boom, everything just started to explode.

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And I was sitting there looking at the 2 pots, thinking about the one that I put in as I was kind of focusing on all of these doom and gloom situations, and then I was looking at the one that I, I sowed with, um, just, I don’t know, it was enthusiasm and excitement.

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And I wasn’t, they’re wildflowers, so I wasn’t even really sure what was gonna come up.

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And I put them on a pot and, and just kind of, kind of just said, “Do your thing.”

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And, and it reminds me that plants really show us another path, right?

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A seed has to leave the cupboard at some point.

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In, in the wild, they don’t even get a chance to hide in the cupboard, right?

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No matter how impossible the location may seem, whether it’s a busy city street or a super dense forest, flowers go to seed, right?

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They, they fly, they jump, they explode out into the world and they dive into dark, unfamiliar soil, kind of oftentimes having to deal with a lot of obstacles along the way.

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And while it’s true that some never make it to soil or some actually come into soil and then don’t germinate, hence the pot that didn’t germinate, at the end, you know, some will find that teeny tiny patch surrounded sometimes by concrete and rock and every single obs- obstacle that you can imagine for yourself when you’re thinking about your own talents, and even though they have the tiniest, tiniest chance of success, that moisture in that ground will soften the shell that once seemed super

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hard and impenetrable and something will sprout, or someone, in this case, will sprout.

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And all of this, all of this, like, softening of the shell and sprouting and, like, starting off new all starts in the darkness, right?

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Where even the fear that comes with the unknowing whence- with the whole, like, this is an unknown beginning, I don’t know what I have, I don’t know what’s gonna come up when I start to emerge, I don’t know what direction I’m gonna be able to grow in, I don’t know any of these types of things.

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But that’s all part of the recipe, right?

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That’s all exactly how plants exist, right?

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Seeds must enter into the dark, even though it’s unfamiliar, even though kin don’t know what obstacles they might face in order to germinate.

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It’s a part of the process, the unknowing, the, the unknown conditions, the not really sure what you’re gonna find is all.

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So today, we’re gonna be talking about how to treat our fears and all of our shadowy type traits the way a good gardener treats compost, with curiosity, with oxygen, and with just enough watery emotions, uh, every time I say water, think emotions, to wake up that hidden potential.

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And we’re gonna look at simple ways to water your anxiety.

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kind of a pl- little play on words there, to, to really look at how to work through your self-doubt and even all of the dread, whether it’s climate dread, social dread, political dread, all kinds of dreads that you’re experiencing, to start feeding your creativity instead of rotting on the shelf, instead of having something about yourself and having these beautiful amazing gifts that you contain that you are kind of put away for safekeeping, for a rainy day, where

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we are in the rainy day, right?

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We, we want your skills to emerge.

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So in episode 115, we’re going to explore how to plant your hidden seeds, turning fear into fertile soil, and if that sounds like a conversation that you want to have, something that you’ve really been craving, then stick around, because we’re going to open up this cupboard, we’re gonna roll up our sleeves.

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I always have to remember to do that ’cause I often wear long sleeves and then I go outside to, like, deal things in the garden.

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It’s like, “Ugh.”

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Roll up your sleeves and we’re gonna get your seeds, all of these talents and these skills and these characteristics that you’ve been hiding into the shadows, putting up into the cupboards, trying to say you will use them for a rainy day.

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We’re gonna put these in the soil.

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Welcome to Reconnect With Plant Wisdom.

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I’m your host, Tigrilla Gardenia, nature inspired mentor, certified life coach, and the founder of the Naturally Conscious Community.

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For over a decade, I’ve been known as a world ambassador for plant advocacy, working closely with plants to share their practical wisdom to help you consciously embody the elements of life that nourish your evolution.

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In this podcast, I delve into ancient and modern knowledge from biology to spirituality about the wondrous ways of plants.

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Together, we’ll explore how ecosystem thinking helps you overcome limiting beliefs, understand the true nature of relationships, and live an authentic, impactful life.

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Okay.

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So I have, as I was organizing up my thoughts around this, my outline, I, I kind of identified a few big areas that I wanna talk about with you today.

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first of all, I really wanna talk about the idea of fear as an unplanted potential, and this is about kind of looking at your shadowy parts again.

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We’re gonna be, over the next few episodes, really looking at a bigger picture, both light and darkness relating and connected to you.

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So in this case, we’re gonna be talking about things like anxiety and self-doubt and anger, these things that we tend to think about as weeds that we want to yank out, but we know that weeds really are wild plants.

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They’re nutrient rich.

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They, they’re dense.

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They have so many beautiful properties and they’re just waiting to feed on new growth.

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They’re waiting to help us explore and nourish different aspects of ourselves.

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We’re also gonna talk about, as I talk about all the time, the ecosystem principle.

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I mean, my kind of centerpiece is the idea that you are a living ecosystem and I want you to have that ico- livi- living ecosystem within you and without you, right, and throw it in

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I’m gonna slow down ’cause as you can see, I keep jumbling words and I jumble words because I’m excited.

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And so as I’m excited, I start to speak faster.

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Can you tell that these are, like, those topics?

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The idea that you have things that you are not sharing with the world, parts of you that n- you’re not sh- I’m getting emotional.

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Parts of you that you’re not sharing in the world that you keep hiding away on a shelf thinking that the perfect time is going to arrive is, like, oh my goodness.

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It, it, it touches me and I, I, I, I, I don’t want you to ever f- Anyway, I’m, I’m gonna keep going.

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Hopefully, you, you’ll understand.

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See, it’s all those places where the words don’t really come.

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So my point being is I was talking about an ecosystem and the fact that when you’re in an ecosystem, right, a forest, nothing is wasted, right?

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a forest, nothing is wasted, right?

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Dead fall feeds the mycelium and in your personal living ecosystem, your uncomfortable emotions can feed creativity and purpose and relational depth.

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So I really want to emphasize and go deeper into this concept.

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Also, the fact that you’re moving from isolation to germination, right?

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The idea that a seed needs contact with soil and waters and microbes and other kinds of nourishment, all of these relationships.

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And not only does the seed need to have them, the seed needs to recognize them, because it’s not enough to just put a seed into the soil.

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We’ve all put seeds into the soil that haven’t grown because that seed doesn’t receive or doesn’t recognize the things around that are most important, and this happens to a lot of us.

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We tend to fi- find ourselves in isolation where we’re really alone, not because there’s no one around but because we isolate ourselves away from what’s there.

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So we’re going to explore through some little micro-practices that help you move out of the fear of the mental isolation and into relational flow.

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And, and this is an important aspect of not only do we have to create relationships but we have to recognize the relationships that are around us and how we can best make use of them, because not all of them are crystal clear.

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And oftentimes society has taught us that these relationships are bad and these are good when in reality everything can be useful if you put it into the right context.

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The other thing I wanna talk about a lot is this whole daily seasonal cyc- cycles that we have.

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We have many different cycles and you have a rhythm and you need to start experimenting with that rhythm, like my morning creation, my evening strategy, my monthly rhythm.

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There’s, this is all about showing you how to honor your personal cycles because this is another way to get out of the anxiety and the fear and all these different aspects.

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Because I’m oftentimes feeling anxious when I’m trying to do something in a time that’s not right for my body, that’s not right for my mind, it’s not right for the way I do things.

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And so I go into overload, I go into overwhelm and therefore the anxiety hits or even the idea that I have to do something.

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I used to get super anxious when I first moved to Damanhur about meal times for the longest time.

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For the first maybe 2 months that I lived here I didn’t eat with the family because my body as you, uh, you’ve heard me talk, I have body dysmorphia so at the time I was, you know, kind of in a stability period but it’s very easy to go outside of that stability period.

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Back then it was really easy for that to happen and the concept of having to be forced to eat, um, at a certain time because that was the rhythm of this place, and also constrained to eat what was being prepared because again that’s the way that the system was working, was really anxious

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Like would create a lot of anxiety inside of me and I, I had to come to, to terms with it, find

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I had to go through it and I had to experience it and then learn to vocalize it.

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And it’s, it’s still taken me years to try to explain to people that what here is very common and normal especially in an Italian culture when we sit down to eat is not the same for other places and for people who have different kinds of situations relating to and around food.

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It’s not very healthy and I had come from a long period of experimentation where I knew my body and I knew when and what to eat.

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So we’re, we’re gonna get farther into these details because I think it’s a really important thing because when you honor your personal cycle then you turn overwhelm into something that’s dependable, like a dependable momentum that pushes you forward.

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And then the other thing is about I want to work on how we prepare the bed, you know if you think about it from a garden perspective.

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How do I prepare my garden bed for eventual shadow work?

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Um, why is it that meeting your fears with unconditional curiosity and with unconditional love really helps us move towards it?

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And I have a new, um, live workshop series, Reconnect With Plant Kin, that I’m working on that is specifically to work on this.

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How do we work on different aspects using, uh, small lessons connected to the plant, daily practices and a whole series of other pieces?

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So I’m gonna talk about that really in detail.

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Basically by the end of this episode my wish is super, super simple.

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I want you to feel your fear shift from this kind of locked cupboard where everything is kind of kept safe by isolating it and putting it aside and not touching it, to a rich earthy compost in which you can pull those seeds out and look at them and identify which ones are the ones that I want to plant now.

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And I really want you to be able to leave this episode with one, at least one small practice to start planting those hidden seeds today, right?

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How do you take your gifts and your talents and pieces of you that you’ve been hiding away and start to give them life, to nourish them, to allow them to germinate in their own time?

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And if this conversation sparks a yes in your body, right, about yes, this is what I want, i wanna invite you to join me for that first workshop of Reconnect

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Actually the next one ’cause by the time this comes out it’ll probably be the second one, of Reconnect With Plant Kin which I am planning on doing it around plant guided shadow work and how do you integrate the parts that you’ve tried to prune away?

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All of the details will be in the show notes, in the description so don’t worry about it.

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And because all of this is because the world really doesn’t need any more stored potential.

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It doesn’t need any just something that’s hidden away for safe.

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It needs your seeds in the ground germinating, intertwining, feeding the wider ecosystem that we’re all a part of.

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So are we ready for all of it?Great.

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Let’s say, oh wait, wait, first I wanna invite you to connect with one of my eco-conscious business partners.

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When you support them, you support the germination of more intentional business all around the world.

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I want you to have the same experiences I do for all of my podcasting needs, and it’s time to share your story.

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Okay, let’s, or alors, let’s really get deeper, deeper, deeper into all of this because there’s just so many things I want to say.

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And I mean, yeah, I could probably go on for hours about this.

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And, and if you do wanna go on for hours in the sense of if you wanna have fruitful conversations where we explore and we look at solutions, please come into The Naturally Conscious Community ’cause that’s really the place where we are having those, you know, through our in-depth discussions and our random posts to be able to explore new thoughts and things that are coming out and all of the different programs that we have going on in there.

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So, but for a moment, I wanna meet fear in its native habitat, right?

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I want you to just close your eyes.

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Well, unless you’re driving.

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If you’re listening to this while you’re driving, please don’t close your eyes.

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But if you can, close your eyes, and if you can’t, you know, just concentrate on the road and let that be a similar feeling.

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And I just want you to feel the kind of cool air that’s around your face, right?

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Imagine that in your hands, you’re holding a tiny paper packet.

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And what’s inside?

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Well, every idea you’ve ever set aside because the timing felt wrong.

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Every idea, every talent, every part of yourself that you said, “Not now.”

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So you have taken this and you’ve put them in this cupboard where they’re going to be safe and out of sight and out of mind.

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And I just want you for a second to picture this, to, like, feel it.

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What did it feel like to put it away?

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Did you put it away knowing when you would use it?

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Did you put it away and then forget about it?

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Out of sight, out of mind?

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Did you instead put it away just out of fear and you have no idea when you will ever pull it out, or even if you will ever pull it out?

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Just sit with that for a second and that feeling.

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In episode 86, we talked about how our shadow personalities, the traits we hide are often the richest compost, the most nourishing parts of ourself.

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And so I want you to really think about this from the perspective of, what if all of those hidden talents, all of those ideas that you put up on the shelf were actually the most enriching parts of the ecosystem, the life you’re trying to live?

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What if in there, in that seed packet is, uh, the piece that will all of a sudden connect everything that you’re looking at right now?

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For me, ambition, for example, has always been a shadow trait, or at least it used to be.

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No one in my family was really ambitious so it wasn’t encouraged, it wasn’t even modeled.

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I didn’t have a good marker for it.

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I mean, I had some people around me who were successful but not necessarily ambitious in a good way, like they weren’t striving to be better.

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My first relationship, um, my first relationships actually through my 20s, all of the people were more successful and had ambition to become someone.

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They were musicians or, um, they were superstars in their work, especially when I started working in technology and in, es- you know, these were all people that had a, a, a vision, a dream you might say, and they were actively working.

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So I just naturally fit into being their support system.

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I didn’t have my own kind of big dream.

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I didn’t have the thing I wanted to become.

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I had tried lots of different pieces but I, y- again, nobody in my family had ever kind of said, “I want to be this.”

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Um, and so therefore, I, I just didn’t have that as a model and nobody even encouraged me to do that.

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Um, and so much so I became the support system that the reason I eventually left RealNetworks back when the company was just, like, on its heyday was because my partner at the time became my boss, and since he was on track to become, you know, the general manager and eventually the manager of our entire department and eventually a VP, I got sidelined into a group that wasn’t working on something I was particularly interested in.

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I mean, because I was trying to support his career and not come into his way, and at the time, the company wasn’t that large and other groups I didn’t really fit into, so I got put into this, like, little group.

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Great people by the way.

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Super loved working with these people.

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But the product we were working on, totally outside of my wheel well.

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And so it was the only way I could stay in the company but I couldn’t take on any role of importance because as my partner, and eventually who became my husband, um, e- it, it was, e- he would always be kind of above me because he was the superstar with the ambition, with all these different pieces.

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So eventually I ended up leaving.

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Now mind you, I ended up at Microsoft, which was great, so that’s another story and I had another piece there.

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But over and over again, every time I would take a step into the spotlight, slowly, and my ambition would s- kind of try to get some space, someone would come into my life that wanted to be on that same stage or wanted to be on a stage that was very similar, and I would just step back into the backstage area.

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I even went from co-owning a circus to being the backstage manager for Cirque du Soleil, which sounds like a step up for you because

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and I, I could understand that because, you know, here you go from, like, this tiny little group that I was working with, a bunch of crazy carnies and, you know, to being on the road with Cirque du Soleil.

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But the truth of the matter is that I at the time had a production company that I was running.

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I was doing some really amazing shows with like 2,000 people.

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I was, you know, up, going slowly up and growing this company from nothing, and I left all of that because I wanted to support, at the time, my partner, his big dream to be a circus tech, and that was what he wanted.

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So I made myself of service to him.

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I literally, and I have an, a podcast episode where I talked about this, all the things that I did in order to create the environment so that he could get this job for Cirque.

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So my ambition kept getting pushed back into the shadows or it would be used in service of somebody else.

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So rather than using and being ambitious for myself, I would take the energy that I would have used for me ambitiously and put it into that person.

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And it wasn’t until probably my 40s that I finally went down into the darkness of my own self to understand where this ambition was.

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So much so that in Damanhur we have this thing called

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we have, uh, one of the bodies, it’s one of the 4 main bodies of, of Damanhur’s called the Teknarkatu.

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It’s the last body that came online and one of the most important.

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This body is the one that’s dedicated to personal development, because remember, in Damanhur everything is done for the col- in, in the collective perspective and so, you know, you first create your spiritual path and then you have all of the collective rituals and the collective work we do when you live in community and you’re doing all these things and you’re changing constantly with the game of life, but at some point you gotta look at yourself because you are an individual inside of that collective, right?

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the ambition of putting myself up on that stage in that way.

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Even when I got into all of the performing arts and to my production company, all of that was as a result of the fact that I was first hired as, as a performer in a type of performance that then connected me and started my spiritual reawakening and a whole set of processes, which one day, we’ll talk about it.

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I’ll tell you all about it.

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But the point being is that I actually always would start on the stage and then would get pushed behind it.

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So my personal law, which I wrote in 2 thir- 2013 was, “I have the courage to nurture my creative and artistic side in the arts and express them freely in Damanhur and in my work.

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I have the strength to launch myself into roles instead of always remaining behind the scenes.”

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Isn’t that amazing?

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Like, that was my personal law, and that was around the time where sitting in the Sacred Woods Temple, I realized that all characteristics, all traits, all talents, all these things that I had been pushing down that I had been saying were wrong about me, all of these things that said I could never be on stage because I have to support others, because I’m not allowed to show these parts of me, because I’m not capable of dealing with this aspect, because I’m a bad at blah, blah, blah or whatever, insert your

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favorite thing there, th- that was around the time that I realized that that was all bullshit.

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Like, in an ecosystem, everything, everything, everything is useful when you find its place, when you know how to use it, and when you know how much of it to use.

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Fear isn’t a weed.

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It’s unplanted nitrogen, right?

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It’s, it’s something that gives you energy.

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When we bury it, when we, when we actually, like, seed it into the ground, it feeds new growth, and I had to seed my ambition.

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I had to let my ambition and trust that my ambition could come from a place of positivity, a place of sharing, of a desire to be where I am right now, to, to share wisdom and teaching and grow and co-create with you, because I don’t

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I, I, I even struggle nowadays, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this.

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So if you, if you were ever to look at my old, old stuff, I use the word teacher a lot.

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I don’t really use teacher.

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I use mentor, I use coach, but I also use facilitator.

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I use co-creator, because I, sure, I can teach you some stuff, and I love teaching.

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I love teaching.

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in my teaching, I learn just as much.

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And so when I started to plant these talents of myself that allowed me to go up on the stage, that allowed me to, to be the center point and to trust that I was gonna do it from a beautiful place of co-creation, my world started to open, and this is that ecosystem principle I was talking about, right?

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In a living forest, nothing is wasted.

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Nothing.

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And so again, when I was sitting in the Sacred Woods Temple and I was looking out and I was realizing that there is nothing in here that gets wasted, nothing in here that gets put into a corner and no organism wants to touch it.

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Everything does.

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And our emotions, our uncomfortable emotions, even, can have the same role, right?

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Waste or a difficult experience becomes nourishment for something or someone else.

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And so if we keep all of that in circulation, if our uncomfortable emotions become talking points, become fuel for something, become a learning experience, they get composted or involved, reused, moved around instead of sealing them into emotional landsca- uh, landfills, then all of a sudden, you have this extra bout of nourishment.

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I was just writing a post today about something and I- I was- I put an expression down about, like, you know, giving, um

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H- how was it that I put it?

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It was something like sit next to a plant.

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I was- I was putting together a little exercise and I was thinking about just sitting next to a plant and then dumping all of your stuff into that plant.

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And I was remembering when I was in Australia many years ago, I was teaching a class there, and one of the women was talking about how she has a tree that she loves, this- this tree friend that lives right outside of her front door.

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And she always goes, before going into her house, especially on days where she’s had a really rough day, she goes to the tree friend first and she dumps all of her shit.

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And she says at first, she felt bad.

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Like, “Oh, my God.”

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It’s kind of like when you’re talking to a friend and you just dump all your shit onto your friend and your friend at first is like, “Uh, what am I supposed to do with all that?”

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But if your friend thinks about themselves as a tree, what is fertilizer?

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Fertilizer is made out of shit.

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I mean, there’s no other way to say it.

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I could say it kind of more politely but it’s really made out of shit.

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It’s made out of a bunch of nurs- nourishment and nutrients that are inside of

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And so, when you dump that onto a plant, when you don’t do it from the perspective of, “I’m giving it to you,” as in, like, “Oh, my God.

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Deal with it,” but instead I’m thinking of, “Hey, I’m having this experience, these uncomfortable emotions, this stuff, and I wanna push it out there because I feel like you can help me recycle it, filter it, use it, experience it,” it becomes a co-creative process, right?

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Your wounds, whether you’re talking about, uh, social anxiety or rage at climate inaction, or grief over even old systems that are going down, feeds someone when it’s composed into and it’s composted into a story or art or activism or even a softer form of listening.

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If you come at it from the aggressive, deal with it, you’re wrong type of thing, sure, that’s not gonna be super healthy.

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But when instead it becomes a opening for expression and processing, and especially co-processing, right, it’s- it has this opportunity to become something that gives space for something bigger, or it becomes a piece of a puzzle that someone else can interact with.

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So, the next- next time a painful memory flares, picture it more like a falling branch, right?

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It’s- it’s a falling branch, and ask yourself who or what could grow if I keep this in circulation instead of locking it off in emotional concrete.

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All right.

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So, think about it from the perspective of, like, a nurse log, right, a plant, a tree that falls over, a branch that falls on the ground and all of a sudden decomposers and insects and other kinds of beings, you know, create little holes in it and- and become home and it becomes food.

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And as the- the bark slowly decomposes, all of a sudden all these other nutrients are lashed, uh, are- are lashed.

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Lashed is me mixing languages, just so you know.

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Are left behind ʻcause then Ƴa rìlasciare, like, see, just mixing in languages there.

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But the point being is that rather than putting it into an emotional concrete or trying to put it into this theoretical dump that doesn’t exist, because the dump just ends up being inside of you and just fills up and fills up, let it continue to circulate.

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So, if you think about it for a second, let one

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Just- just for a second, right, let one of your dead branches come to your mind, something that maybe was an experience that failed or a time when you tried to put yourself out there and something happened, a rejection email, a harsh feedback or criticism.

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And now, for a second, picture a beetle chewing away at it, turning it into fertilizer for something larger for you.

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J- just picture it.

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Hear the little beetle.

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Imagine that beetle in there saying, “Oh, my goodness, thank you so much for giving this to me.

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Like, I now- I can get fed and I’m gonna create something that someone else can use, whether it’s you or someone else.”

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Isn’t that beautiful, right, when you really allow yourself to just be in that?

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Imagine that beetle just getting all this nourishment and food.

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I- I imagine, like, a little chubby beetle that’s like, “Oh, my God, this is so good,” and then pooping out something and someone else coming around going, “Oh, my God, that’s so useful.”

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And, you know, it’s just this whole little forest.

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This is how my mind works, okay?

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I- I see all of my emotions kind of like this, like all these little insects and plants and birds and all kinds of other animals and, you know, it’s just- it’s great.

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So, let’s stay with the image for a second and let’s stay specifically

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Actually, let’s go back to the seed image, right, that we had, and let’s zoom in on it.

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If you remember in episode 77 when I was talking about growing in- towards the darkness, I told the story of the monstera, how much monstera plants love the dark.

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That behavior is called scototropism, right, growing towards darkness so you can anchor and find moisture and then lift yourself from there into the light.

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And there are a number of different plants that really exhibit a lot of scototropism.

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And scototropism is, again, another one of those areas that in the human mind we’ve been thinking about it as bad, right?

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Why would I ever grow towards the dark?

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If we think about dark spaces, it’s often a- an area of evil or some kind of something bad could happen, it’s unsafe.

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When in reality, a darkness can be

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I mean, if you’ve ever had a migraine, you know how wonderful the darkness is, right?

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The idea of I sit there.

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Or if you just need a moment of safety and you pull a blanket over your head and you just sit in there all cuddled up and warm.

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And, you know, if you can do it with somebody else, that’s great too, but even by yourself it’s freaking awesome.

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And so-

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growing towards the darkness can be a place for you to find a new anchor inside yourself, for you to find how to- where the moisture is, where are your emotions, how do you process through them, navigate through them, maybe even find new emotions in there, in that watery part of ourselves.

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And then once we feel stable again, and once we feel like we found what we need, we can use that as an anchor to push us towards other areas of light, always remembering that the darkness is there for us.

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‘Cause we humans really try the opposite.

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We, we keep our, uh, our hard feelings sort of in the mental spotlight.

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We think we’re supposed to have them all lit up, analyzing them alone and with a big flashlight.

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I, I can just picture the flashlight going through my mind, rather than letting everything kinda sink in.

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Because germination, like scototropism, means those relationships, and sometimes those relationships are soil particles, and mycorrhizal whispers, and bacterial hugs, and root supports.

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They’re, they’re things that just hang out in the dark.

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So yes, the light can be really useful, as I was talking about sharing around, but that beetle doesn’t always eat that dead branch from the outside where it’s in the middle of the light.

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The beetle will bury into and eat from the inside because it’s safe, because it’s cozy, because the tender parts are inside there, and that eating is a way of, of processing and of recycling and of moving things through.

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And so, you know, we have to be able to be flexible to, to play around in this light and this darkness and recognize the times where things like phototropism are gonna be important, moving towards the light, or even heliotropism, which is literally moving towards the sunlight, which is a slightly different light, and again, another episode that I’m going to have to do at some point, versus scototropism, the idea that I really need to just bury into the darkness because that’s what’s better for me.

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So let’s do a, a 60-second kind of soil check, okay?

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I want you to name a current fear.

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Like, this could be something soft, just outs- out loud to yourself, but just give it a name, right?

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Whatever fear you might have.

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Think of it as one of those seeds that you’re putting into the packet, and you’re, like, putting up on the shelf.

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It could be, I don’t know, the fear, the fear of writing a piece that you post that is your strong political views, or it could be the fear of taking on a leadership role in the organization that you’re on, of putting yourself up for promotion.

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It could be the fear of starting your own business or of going to somebody.

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I did something super fearful, talking about the whole singing thing, and to be honest, I did it, and that was already a first step.

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And then I finally got feedback back on it, and now it’s, like, the next step that I have to do which is still scary, which is, I reached out to a good friend of mine who plays the bass guitar, and him and another friend of mine from here, from dominhur have been, like, jamming out.

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One plays guitar, and the other one plays bass.

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And I reached out to them, and I said, “Hey, uh, do you guys have anybody who sings?”

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And they’re like, “Nope.”

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And I was like, “Well, would you be open to, like, having me come, uh, every once in a while and sing with you?”

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And he’s like, “Sure.”

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So he sent me a series of songs, which I haven’t even looked at, to be honest, yet.

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Um, but I’m excited because that was a big step for me, like, to potentially put myself out there as a singer again, to, to take that stage.

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I mean, it’s been years since I sang.

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I could suck.

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I mean, I, I don’t have a beautiful voice, just so that you know.

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I have a trained voice.

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I always said that ’cause, uh, uh, people who have beautiful, natural voices, I don’t have that.

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I have somebody who’s trained and spent, you know, years learning techniques in order to be able to sing, and who does a lot of singing in her car, uh, with musicals ’cause I love, love, love, love, love musicals.

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And so, uh, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna put myself out there.”

315
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So want you to just name a current fear that you have, just out loud to yourself, and I want you to place your hand on the floor with the palm facing down to the earth.

316
00:40:22,407 –> 00:40:23,247
feel

317
00:40:23,247 –> 00:40:24,886
It doesn’t matter what kind of floor you have.

318
00:40:24,886 –> 00:40:26,879
It doesn’t matter if you’re indoors or outdoors for right now.

319
00:40:26,879 –> 00:40:30,039
Obviously, if you can go outside, it’d be great, but if you can’t, don’t worry about it.

320
00:40:30,039 –> 00:40:33,616
You know, everything is still somehow connected to the earth.

321
00:40:34,520 –> 00:40:40,560
And ask yourself, “What connection does this fear need right now?

322
00:40:41,954 –> 00:40:46,622
Water, fungus, fellow seeds, maybe an element.

323
00:40:47,299 –> 00:40:52,688
What is the support that this fear needs?

324
00:40:53,180 –> 00:40:59,038
Or what is the inspiration this fear needs?

325
00:40:59,679 –> 00:41:01,712
What does this fear need right now?”

326
00:41:03,199 –> 00:41:04,820
And breathe into that answer.

327
00:41:04,820 –> 00:41:05,739
Whatever may come.

328
00:41:05,739 –> 00:41:07,380
Don’t censor it, just let it come.

329
00:41:07,380 –> 00:41:10,539
It might come in images, it might come in feelings, it might come in memories.

330
00:41:10,539 –> 00:41:12,720
Let it come however it may come.

331
00:41:23,010 –> 00:41:36,959
When I first did this exercise, my fear of being judged for wanting to share my message in the spotlight, obviously I was thinking a lot about this whole ambition thing, but that thing came wiping like, pff, whipped back up for a second.

332
00:41:36,959 –> 00:41:47,088
And, and the answer I remember, ’cause it, it popped back up in the past, in the sense that it came back up as the memory of like what was really holding me back.

333
00:41:47,580 –> 00:41:51,454
And the answer was, this is gonna sound really strange, but you know me, and I say strange things,

334
00:41:52,539 –> 00:41:54,672
Compost peers.

335
00:41:56,962 –> 00:41:57,859
Let me explain this.

336
00:41:57,859 –> 00:41:58,779
Okay.

337
00:41:58,779 –> 00:42:24,559
So when I first started to step into the light a little bit and kind of move, this was years ago, when I finally eventually left one of my partners and ended up, you know, ’cause my first foray before I ever started to do it here in 2013, my first foray into this was when I was, um, still back in Seattle, and I was, um, be- I was working in tech, and I was ch- you know, s- some, some opportunities were coming in front of me.

338
00:42:24,559 –> 00:42:28,940
And I realized that I didn’t have an ecosystem of support around me.

339
00:42:28,940 –> 00:42:37,264
I had people around me who loved me and they thought I was awesome, but again, I had been their support system, and this had been a trait that I had done.

340
00:42:37,819 –> 00:42:56,030
I had not, and when I, when I come back to 2013 when I wrote that personal law, and I started to look around at the ecosystem around me, I realized that the people that I was creating, I was navigating towards, were again people who were looking at me to support them and not for them to support me.

341
00:42:56,979 –> 00:43:00,499
So I’ve over the years have had to have many hard conversations.

342
00:43:00,499 –> 00:43:28,158
One of the things of really digging into my ambition, of really understanding what that means for me, and what it means for me to get a message out, or to share messages, or to be in the spotlight in whatever way that it might be, which by the way, it’s, it’s very hard still to talk about this in this way, because of course when we hear people that are ambitious, we tend to think about like, oh, somebody who wants to hog the stop- spotlight or whatever.

343
00:43:28,679 –> 00:43:29,939
But it’s really not that.

344
00:43:29,939 –> 00:43:31,499
It’s you have something to say.

345
00:43:31,499 –> 00:43:33,719
You have something to say and you have to get it out there.

346
00:43:33,719 –> 00:43:39,019
And I can’t be worrying all the time, which I do, about whether or not if I post that, am I gonna get 1,001

347
00:43:39,019 –> 00:43:41,779
I’m probably still not as controversial as I could be.

348
00:43:41,779 –> 00:43:54,599
Like, if I was to really speak certain things, I would be a lot more controversial, but I, I do still have a little bit of that whole like, I don’t wanna be judged and I don’t wanna be kind of like looked at as somebody who’s irrational and a whole series of other things.

349
00:43:54,599 –> 00:44:06,999
But I have had really hard conversations over the years with partners and friends and even family members about not always, not always being there only for them.

350
00:44:06,999 –> 00:44:16,259
And I’ve had to step away from some of them, because I realized that all I was doing was giving away my power, giving away myself to put them onto the stage.

351
00:44:16,259 –> 00:44:17,419
And I still love doing that.

352
00:44:17,419 –> 00:44:21,939
By the way, I thought for a long time that my main archetype was like a pillar, but I’m not.

353
00:44:21,939 –> 00:44:22,659
I’m a bridge.

354
00:44:22,659 –> 00:44:26,919
And so I do love bridging that, and I love taking people from one place to the other.

355
00:44:26,919 –> 00:44:29,859
So I will never do things where it’s just me.

356
00:44:29,859 –> 00:44:32,019
I love the ensemble cast.

357
00:44:32,019 –> 00:44:33,259
I absolutely adore.

358
00:44:33,259 –> 00:44:36,779
And that was the other piece to realize, is I, I wanna be an ensemble.

359
00:44:36,779 –> 00:44:39,579
And in an ensemble, we all help each other grow.

360
00:44:39,579 –> 00:44:40,538
I don’t just support you.

361
00:44:40,538 –> 00:44:41,419
I’m not a pillar.

362
00:44:41,419 –> 00:44:43,079
And pillars are great, by the way.

363
00:44:43,079 –> 00:44:47,504
I think f- so useful and I’ve been a pillar for so many times in my life, and I’m proud of it.

364
00:44:48,099 –> 00:44:51,919
But I’m a bridge, and I love being able to be and co-create that stage with you.

365
00:44:51,919 –> 00:44:53,319
I want the ensemble cast.

366
00:44:53,319 –> 00:44:58,319
I want us all to be helping each other put their message out into the world.

367
00:44:58,319 –> 00:45:04,999
And you know, I let their s- feedback and the support of the people around me be the fungal network.

368
00:45:04,999 –> 00:45:08,894
I won’t lie, I lost a lot of friends along the way.

369
00:45:09,579 –> 00:45:16,059
But even that became nourishment for the ecosystem, because I started to realize that I had built things off of the wrong perspectives.

370
00:45:16,059 –> 00:45:20,399
Or I guess I would say even different than losing friends along the way.

371
00:45:20,399 –> 00:45:25,339
I would say I re-catego- re-categorize, that sounds so harsh too.

372
00:45:25,339 –> 00:45:33,199
I rediscovered relationships and relationships weren’t as binary as I thought that they were.

373
00:45:33,199 –> 00:45:37,982
They weren’t like just this or that, and I realized that I had been positioning people into different places.

374
00:45:39,042 –> 00:45:40,019
Here’s the thing.

375
00:45:40,019 –> 00:45:46,119
The th- really big thing that I noticed, that I realized in all of this was that darkness isn’t absence.

376
00:45:46,119 –> 00:45:47,248
It’s incubation.

377
00:45:48,319 –> 00:46:01,771
It’s putting something in there with the desire of giving it the space to grow, not forgetting about it.And to do that, I have to really understand my own way of growing, right?

378
00:46:01,771 –> 00:46:03,912
What are my cycles?

379
00:46:03,912 –> 00:46:09,251
How do I operate and when am I most useful for myself and for others?

380
00:46:09,251 –> 00:46:13,712
And this is, again, why I say that I still love supporting others, and sometimes I am a pillar.

381
00:46:13,712 –> 00:46:18,891
I- I do hold people up at times in the overall context of being a bridge.

382
00:46:18,891 –> 00:46:20,971
I love doing that.

383
00:46:20,971 –> 00:46:23,971
And there are seasonal cycles, there’s periods where I do that.

384
00:46:23,971 –> 00:46:28,531
For example, for my clients, I am there to hold that space, I am there to see you shine.

385
00:46:28,531 –> 00:46:31,652
I am co-creating your reality.

386
00:46:31,652 –> 00:46:37,312
I am the one that is going to help you make your dreams come true, which has always been one of my mottos.

387
00:46:37,312 –> 00:46:43,184
Always, always been a personal motto of myself is I am here to help others make their dreams come true.

388
00:46:44,351 –> 00:46:47,411
But that doesn’t mean my dreams don’t come true in the process, right?

389
00:46:47,411 –> 00:47:01,771
And so I listen very carefully and I have periods and seasons where, for example, um, I am just now coming out of a season of really deep support for my clients where, like, they are front and center and that is the thing that I’m working on.

390
00:47:01,771 –> 00:47:10,331
And now, as I told you, I’m shifting into this, you know, um, Reconnect with Plankin series which puts me back on the teaching stage, something I haven’t been in.

391
00:47:10,331 –> 00:47:16,551
I mean, yeah, of course in- inside of the Naturally Conscious community I facilitate, but I find that more as a facilitation of things.

392
00:47:16,551 –> 00:47:27,571
I haven’t taught a lot of classes in the last few years because I’ve been in a different role, I’ve been in a different stage of my life, of my growing, of my ambition in a completely different way.

393
00:47:27,571 –> 00:47:38,544
And now, I’m being pushed more to be that teacher and to be that mentor from the perspective of holding someone as they learn something new and move them through that learning.

394
00:47:39,491 –> 00:47:43,951
And so there are many different seasons that we have.

395
00:47:43,951 –> 00:47:52,591
I don’t know if you remember, but back in episode 83, I told you about how I had learned my own daily productivity and creativity rhythm, right?

396
00:47:52,591 –> 00:48:03,331
How I’m most productive in, like, the early morning right after I do my morning routine, so I get up and I do my morning routine which is super important to me and I have to have that nourishing routine in the morning.

397
00:48:03,331 –> 00:48:06,851
And then I’m super productive up until around lunchtime.

398
00:48:06,851 –> 00:48:14,371
After lunchtime, I am more about clients and being focused for other people, I don’t really do a lot of strategy or anything.

399
00:48:14,371 –> 00:48:16,011
I do all of that in the morning.

400
00:48:16,011 –> 00:48:19,451
And then super, super, super late at night I am my most creative.

401
00:48:19,451 –> 00:48:23,551
That’s when I create content, that’s where I get new ideas, that’s where everything moves to.

402
00:48:23,551 –> 00:48:35,151
And this was something that I discovered by allowing my own body to just do things for a- an ex- prolonged period of time and just noting down when I was most awake, most productive.

403
00:48:35,151 –> 00:48:37,391
I still kind of take early afternoon naps.

404
00:48:37,391 –> 00:48:39,671
They’re short now, but I still take them.

405
00:48:39,671 –> 00:48:43,411
And this is where- how my creative fire naturally moves.

406
00:48:43,411 –> 00:48:51,331
The data for me said bloom at dawn and after midnight and compost in the mid-afternoon, I guess you could think about it in that way.

407
00:48:51,331 –> 00:49:00,291
Just like many plants do, so many species partly close their stomata, for example, after lunch to conserve water ’cause it’s, like, the super hot.

408
00:49:00,291 –> 00:49:01,871
They’re not lazy, they’re wise.

409
00:49:01,871 –> 00:49:04,011
They’re using their energy wisely, right?

410
00:49:04,011 –> 00:49:07,891
They’re using their water resources, their motions most wisely.

411
00:49:07,891 –> 00:49:24,931
And so I align my schedule, whether that’s writing sprints or, you know, doing kind of super heads down working with Noel, the Christmas cactus to- to kind of come up with strategy, I have my timing and my rhythm, and I have my seasonal yearly rhythm, like monthly rhythm.

412
00:49:24,931 –> 00:49:36,451
I have many different kinds of rhythms that I’ve been able to listen to and I think it’s really important for you to also listen to that in this work because if you’re going to plant seeds, you want to plant the seeds based on your own rhythm.

413
00:49:36,451 –> 00:49:40,991
Don’t- don’t- don’t just do it tomorrow because you- you listened to this and you got all inspired.

414
00:49:40,991 –> 00:49:41,911
That’s great.

415
00:49:41,911 –> 00:49:43,931
If that feels calling to you, do it.

416
00:49:43,931 –> 00:50:00,991
But more importantly, find the rhythm that really works for you because you need to make sure that you are kind of working with that flow and also part of that rhythm is not just the rhythm of when you feel like you give the most, but also the rhythm of when you take the most.

417
00:50:00,991 –> 00:50:03,791
There are periods of the year where I am very needy.

418
00:50:03,791 –> 00:50:04,731
I am needy.

419
00:50:04,731 –> 00:50:06,411
I am needy of lots of different things.

420
00:50:06,411 –> 00:50:17,920
I might need food, I might need, like, friends, I might need cuddles, I might need, like, information, like where I read more, all of these sort of cycles are really good for me.

421
00:50:17,920 –> 00:50:32,599
I started off the year super pumped about one thing I was learning and now I’m taking a break from it because I’m realizing that my mind is very in touch with another kind of creative process and that receiving of information is not the time right now.

422
00:50:32,599 –> 00:50:35,119
And so I haven’t been working on that, but I will.

423
00:50:35,119 –> 00:50:49,072
I’ll get back to it and I feel really comfortable and confident that I will because again, I’m tapped into that cycle of myself and another cycle is gonna come in the next month or so that is gonna propel me back into that learning mode that I need.

424
00:50:50,079 –> 00:50:57,899
So, I wanna finish all of this with a story that leads really right up to this workshop that I’ve been telling you about and all of this new teaching work that I’m doing.

425
00:50:57,899 –> 00:51:01,439
I have a client, we’re gonna call her Maya, why not?

426
00:51:01,439 –> 00:51:07,728
Who grew up labeled the black sheep of her family and being seen felt super unsafe.

427
00:51:08,299 –> 00:51:10,576
Super, super, super, super unsafe.

428
00:51:11,139 –> 00:51:25,219
So when she felt the call as an adult to work on a project that required her to make her presence known in, in, like, a very public way, she shelved it completely and she hid her stuff.

429
00:51:25,219 –> 00:51:45,520
And Maya was drawn, almost hunted by an idea to introduce a whole, um, grouping of people, a very specific audience, to, uh, something that you might say is a little bit more connected to nature in a wooey type of way.

430
00:51:45,520 –> 00:51:46,679
Let’s just say it that way.

431
00:51:46,679 –> 00:51:51,696
But she felt very called, like it was important to get this into and in front of this grouping of people.

432
00:51:52,279 –> 00:52:03,359
And this meant that she had to engage with a whole series of other types of people that she just didn’t have a relationship with and who didn’t feel very comfortable with.

433
00:52:03,359 –> 00:52:18,759
Like, these are people she had to talk about, talk to them in a way that was m- exposing much more of her creative side rather than her more analytic side and her more, uh, logical side which had been the businesses that she had worked in before.

434
00:52:18,759 –> 00:52:21,639
So every time she would think about this, her stomach would clench up.

435
00:52:21,639 –> 00:52:28,639
I mean, I remember her like, every time she would like picture herself having to go and meet with these people and network with these people like, oh my goodness.

436
00:52:28,639 –> 00:52:35,359
I remember her working on different proposals to present to them and she would just create them and then trash them, and create them and trash them.

437
00:52:35,359 –> 00:52:40,319
So together we chose a plant ally for her to work with and Maya sat with that plant.

438
00:52:40,319 –> 00:52:46,480
She named her Fear and she asked like, “How do you grow unseen before you grow seen?

439
00:52:47,059 –> 00:52:53,538
And really, how do I prepare myself and get myself ready to be able to be seen in this way?”

440
00:52:53,538 –> 00:52:56,939
And this was not a process that took a, a day or a month.

441
00:52:56,939 –> 00:53:09,538
It took like a year and something because M- you know, Maya was very much in her shell and we worked tirelessly like looking at all of these situations, thinking about it from an ecosystem, building out her ecosystem within her family.

442
00:53:09,538 –> 00:53:18,576
For example, within her, you know, relations, within the people around her that were most important, and slowly over time her ecosystem started to change.

443
00:53:19,399 –> 00:53:29,639
In NCC, for example, she consistently voiced her dream because she, you know, she had a trusted group of people, all these sprouts that really were working closely together on, on our dreams.

444
00:53:29,639 –> 00:53:48,499
That co-creation that I was telling you about, that idea that we’re an ensemble cast and that we’re all kind of up and creating this forest together, and she would read us like the drafts of her proposal and she would think about, you know, what she wanted to say and she would present it and we would give her feedback, and then she would work with her plant to kind of like feel.

445
00:53:48,499 –> 00:53:59,088
She felt herself very much in the dark like trying to grow in the dark, and at some point she began to contact friends of friends who turned out to be the kinds of people she really wanted to be working with.

446
00:53:59,699 –> 00:54:03,139
And so this sort of shadow phase started to emerge, right?

447
00:54:03,139 –> 00:54:23,559
She started to come out of that shell that she was in and the feedback that she would receive she would take back in and like, you know, ’cause of course she’s still kind of underground in all of this, and she would anchor her confidence in there and she would let that story kind of go further and she would go wider into the circle and friends of friends of friends and slowly but surely.

448
00:54:23,559 –> 00:54:45,159
So rather than just going cold calling, because for her that wouldn’t work, she kind of went the route of I’m gonna start to get comfortable enough to tell the people in my ecosystem around me and I’m gonna put out little feelers that there is maybe a wider ecosystem, so she chose to go down that path because that was what allowed her to anchor in her confidence and to move forward.

449
00:54:45,159 –> 00:54:50,839
Today I’m super happy to say that she’s actually working in exactly the type of project that she’s wanted to work on.

450
00:54:50,839 –> 00:54:56,359
She still has her hiccups because it’s, it’s still like, you know, space and going wider and wider.

451
00:54:56,359 –> 00:55:01,699
She’s been able to get some really nice feedback and good success off this project.

452
00:55:01,699 –> 00:55:10,159
She’s had basically confirmation that this is the path for her, that this is the right, and that’s, that’s what shadow work is, is in action, right?

453
00:55:10,159 –> 00:55:21,699
That, that plant partner is still there with her on her desk every time she goes to work and she uses her darkness as a rooting time rather than proof that she doesn’t belong or that she shouldn’t be doing this, right?

454
00:55:21,699 –> 00:55:24,959
She doesn’t do it to hide, she does it to root.

455
00:55:24,959 –> 00:55:38,279
She does it to explore, she does it to gather up nourishments and this is what I want for all of you which is why, again, the next live workshop, it- for Reconnect with PlantKin is plant-guided shadow work, right?

456
00:55:38,279 –> 00:55:39,999
Where we’re gonna do exactly this type.

457
00:55:39,999 –> 00:55:45,712
We’re gonna identify one trait or a fear, something you’ve been trying to prune away thinking that the way to get

458
00:55:46,499 –> 00:55:51,800
through it is to get rid of it, and we’re gonna partner with the plant to map out its compost path.

459
00:55:51,800 –> 00:55:54,439
Like, how do we compost this?

460
00:55:54,439 –> 00:55:56,519
How does it become what it needs?

461
00:55:56,519 –> 00:56:03,560
How do we take it and break it down into its components so then it becomes something useful to you?

462
00:56:03,560 –> 00:56:09,060
And we’re gonna create a little micro-practice that you can do to keep that soil moist and nourished, right?

463
00:56:09,060 –> 00:56:13,839
How do we, how do we work on the emotional component that holds that space for it?

464
00:56:13,839 –> 00:56:15,739
How do we start to create the ecosystem?

465
00:56:15,739 –> 00:56:18,519
What does your pot look like and what’s inside of it?

466
00:56:18,519 –> 00:56:41,819
And so if your body is excited about this, if you’re curious, tap, tap that link in the show notes, because this is going to be the place to really get into this darkness through a completely different lens, through the lens of, like, really warm compost soil loom, like, you know, when you put your hands into the earth and they come out black and you’re like, “This feels fantastic.”

467
00:56:41,819 –> 00:56:47,819
Reminds me of all the people that told me that when they were little, they used to eat, like, really good compost-y soil.

468
00:56:47,819 –> 00:56:50,538
Like, like, that’s what they would eat, and they just

469
00:56:50,538 –> 00:56:51,419
And, and I can see it.

470
00:56:51,419 –> 00:56:53,879
I can understand it, that richness of it.

471
00:56:53,879 –> 00:57:05,872
So, I want you to bring your seed, you know, your, your fear seed, and we’re gonna supply soil and mycelium and a circle of fellow sprouts all around you that are ready to tender this dark with you.

472
00:57:07,139 –> 00:57:11,959
So in closing, I just want you to remember that the journey we just t- traced, right?

473
00:57:11,959 –> 00:57:20,899
Feed, feed, feed your seed, which is fear as a seed, feed it rather than, you know, trying to isolate it.

474
00:57:20,899 –> 00:57:34,719
This is about nourishing it, nourishing that fear so that it could break down into the parts and we can compost out and take all the nourishment that we can waiting for this dark, living soil that we’re creating.

475
00:57:34,719 –> 00:57:39,279
Remember, nothing is ever wasted in a forest, nor in us.

476
00:57:39,279 –> 00:57:44,579
Everything can be useful when we apply it in the right time and we master its use.

477
00:57:44,579 –> 00:57:52,419
And to, like, lean into the scototrophism inside of you, anchoring first in the shadow so that you can rise into the light.

478
00:57:52,419 –> 00:57:56,848
Feel that darkness as a place of incubation and not of isolation.

479
00:57:57,639 –> 00:58:08,099
And the way you do this is by honoring all of your seasonal rhythms as well as your, you know, daily rhythms, basically staying nourished throughout the path.

480
00:58:08,099 –> 00:58:09,959
This isn’t about drying out.

481
00:58:09,959 –> 00:58:12,899
This isn’t about, like, trying to kill it.

482
00:58:12,899 –> 00:58:14,719
This is the complete opposite.

483
00:58:14,719 –> 00:58:17,619
This is about giving lots and lots of space.

484
00:58:17,619 –> 00:58:25,659
And finally, remember that, you know, what Maya taught us, that even black sheep stories, right, can bloom when you tend them with your plant friends.

485
00:58:25,659 –> 00:58:39,179
In other words, when you take these pieces of yourself that you thought were to be hidden, but instead you share them within a small and trusted ecosystem, then we find the path for them forward.

486
00:58:39,179 –> 00:58:43,739
So, this is kind of your sign that says plant me, right?

487
00:58:43,739 –> 00:58:54,699
And so what’s the perfect next step is for you to join us into this live workshop, Plant-Guided Shadow Work, and just to integrate these parts that you keep trying to prune away, but that’s not what you’re supposed to do.

488
00:58:54,699 –> 00:59:01,839
We’re gonna meet online with, uh, we’re gonna partner with a living plant, and you’re gonna use all these practices in real time.

489
00:59:01,839 –> 00:59:12,099
And if you’re already in Blooming Sprout, by the way, or Flourishing Sprout inside the Naturally Conscious Community, the workshop and every past and future workshop will be there for you.

490
00:59:12,099 –> 00:59:24,459
This is the place for you to watch it, or you can just got- buy it as a one-time offer, and you’re gonna be able to listen to it for the next 3 months, so you’re gonna have it there for you for 3 months to experience.

491
00:59:24,459 –> 00:59:34,059
So if you’re new, tap the link in the show notes, and you will be able to register a la carte, or if you’re already in Seedling Sprouts, you can upgrade to Blooming Sprouts.

492
00:59:34,059 –> 00:59:45,136
So, this is the place where you let your hidden traits meet good compost, safe community, and, uh, you know, I don’t know, a dash of plant magic.

493
00:59:45,739 –> 00:59:55,519
As always, thank you for spending this little pocket of your day with me and with the quiet steadfast wisdom of all of our green allies and teachers.

494
00:59:55,519 –> 01:00:04,259
If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who’s, uh, you know, maybe storing seeds, their own seeds, in the cupboard of maybe later.

495
01:00:04,259 –> 01:00:10,979
Sorry, we should put a big label on it, maybe later or never, ’cause you know, call it out for what it really is.

496
01:00:10,979 –> 01:00:12,379
Or you can leave a review.

497
01:00:12,379 –> 01:00:19,559
It helps more listeners find this path, and it really extends our reach across all the different platforms.

498
01:00:19,559 –> 01:00:22,479
Also, if you want a personal touch, remember, I’m always here.

499
01:00:22,479 –> 01:00:28,078
Just book a free Tea & Plants Chat, and the link is, again, in the show notes.

500
01:00:28,078 –> 01:00:37,520
So until next time, keep your roots deep, your canopy open, and your seeds exactly where they belong, in the soil ready to sprout.

501
01:00:38,159 –> 01:00:41,619
Resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance.

502
01:00:41,619 –> 01:00:43,006
I’ll see you among the sprouts.

503
01:00:45,339 –> 01:00:48,670
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Reconnect With Plant Wisdom.

504
01:00:49,219 –> 01:00:59,568
To continue these conversations, join us in the Naturally Conscious Community, your premier online ecosystem for plant reawakening and accelerated evolution and co-creation with otherkin.

505
01:01:00,194 –> 01:01:09,616
Here, you’ll find expansive discussions, interactive courses, live events, and supportive group programs like the Plant Wisdom Book Club and the Sprouts Writing and Creativity Group.

506
01:01:10,259 –> 01:01:15,479
Connect with like-minded individuals collaborating with plants to integrate these insights into life.

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01:01:15,479 –> 01:01:20,619
Intro and outro music by Steve Sciulli and Poinsetta from The Singing Life of Plants.

508
01:01:20,619 –> 01:01:24,219
That’s it for me, Tigrilla Gardenia, and my plant collaborators.

509
01:01:24,219 –> 01:01:28,400
Until next time, remember, resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance.

510
01:01:28,979 –> 01:01:29,699
I’m out.

511
01:01:29,699 –> 01:01:30,239
Bye.