Growing Mindful: Explorations in the Garden to Deepen Your Awareness

by Joann Calabrese

Cultivate Greater Awareness with this Joyful, Earth-Centered Path of Mindfulness

Enjoy the extraordinary union of meditation and nature with this hands-on guide to being mindful in the garden. Joann Calabrese shares an abundance of activities and exercises you can use while inhabiting any green space, whether it's your yard, a park, or a forest trail. You'll learn to engage with earth energies and the present moment via everyday, accessible practices―all while using the natural world as your portal.

Growing Mindful features dozens of awareness-boosting explorations rooted in sensing the wonder and magic of nature. Discover supplies and settings for each activity, garden correspondences, and 52 plants to mindfully connect with every week of the year. This inspiring, playful guide helps you deepen your spirituality and nurture a unique practice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Meditation, Gardening

272 pages, Paperback

Published January 8, 2021

About the author

Joann Calabrese is a skilled trainer on wellness, mindfulness, and recovery. She is a lifelong organic gardener and herbalist, experienced in meditation, ritual work, and qigong. Her passion is sharing how these intersecting practices can lead to more connectedness and heal the world. Joann co-creates an urban backyard sanctuary for humans and other critters in Denver Colorado. She blogs at www.mindfulnessgardengames.com and posts on Instagram @mindfulnessgardengames.

Reviews

[Amelia Maness-Gilliland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley and Llewellyn Publications, for an arc of Growing Mindful: Explorations in the Garden to Deepen Your Awareness in exchange for an honest review.
As an herbalist and gardener, I cannot fully express how much I enjoyed this book. The premise is brilliant, blending nature and gardening with meditation and being mindful. Each of the exercises alone is a beautiful way to combat stress and ground yourself; integrating these practices, Joan Calabrese provides activities that will enrich your life, mind, body, and spirit.
The book is organized into chapters that outline: sensory, movement, creative, and elemental explorations. I love all of the experiential exercises in this book. I especially love the idea of journaling experiences with plants. By taking time to focus on a single plant and using the author's method of attunement, integration, and reflection, we raise our awareness of it, including its attributes and how we might integrate our experiences with the plant into our lives. She provides a detailed list of plants to explore along with meditation questions. I found that I felt more connected to it by intentionally experiencing a plant, especially those I use to create herbal remedies and teas. I found the exercises and the journaling to be very relaxing, and I looked forward to getting to know a plant a little better each day. My most significant takeaway experience has been how mindful I've become. I'm often moving and doing without giving a lot of thought, just getting things done. These exercises challenged me to slow down and become present, which has tremendous benefits. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys plants, gardening, or anyone who wants to explore experiential ways of becoming more mindful and present in their daily lives.

[Kathy Kysar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing Mindful offers dozens of Exploration exercises to help the reader create a deeper connection to the plant world around them, whether it is in the garden, the greenhouse, or the living room. This is what Calabrese calls “a recipe book of green world mindfulness techniques and activities.” Then, she offers 52 detailed journal prompts to take the reader through one year of plant awareness, focusing on specific plants for each prompt, with suggestions for both drawing and writing to the prompts, that can be completed in any order. My only regret was checking this book out in October instead of May! I will definitely check it out again come spring.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether you are a novice or an expert at meditation or gardening, you will benefit from this book. Joann has a lovely, gentle, accessible style. You may not even realize just how much information you are absorbing! The activities are things you can do anywhere, even if you don't have a garden or want to practice inside. And it's fun to choose one plant characteristic as a guide for your week. It's quite grounding and can help you notice achievements, small and large, throughout your week. Enjoy!

[Alana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh! What a beautiful little book that called to me just walking into a cafe for a lovely ceremonial cacao on a public holiday on Easter weekend. I’ve been without family and friends, working throughout it all, and having a moment of peace with this gorgeous book and its prose was exactly what I needed. I usually don’t connect to plants like this so was an unexpected treasure. May buy this book. What a joy to own and look back on for reflection and grounding

[Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could be great for the right reader. Lots of plant-related mindfulness exercises, lots of journaling, and some tidbits of interesting information about a bunch of specific plants that might be helpful if you have or have access to those specific plants.

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, well written and full of useful exercises. It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Han · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful mindfulness book for gardeners.
I am going to continue to use this books back half of mindfulness practices in the weeks to come as I begin to reinvigorate my own garden.

[Dawn Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing Mindful by Joann Calabrese

9780738764771

288 Pages
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications
Release Date: January 8, 2021

Nonfiction, Mind, Body & Spirit, Religion & Spirituality

Nowadays it is important to find ways to be more mindful. There is so much stress and anxiety that it is crucial we find ways to relax. One way to do that is to connect with nature. The author provides different techniques to be mindful in the garden. The book is divided into the following parts.

Part 1: Green World Explorations
Chapter 1: Sensory Explorations
Chapter 2: Movement Explorations
Chapter 3: Creative Explorations
Chapter 4: Elemental Explorations
Chapter 5: Explorations of Connection
Chapter 6: Deeper Explorations

Part 2: Plant Correspondences as Mindful Focus
In this section, there are 52 weeks with a plant associated with each one.

I really enjoyed the different techniques she shared including the advice of journaling the experiences. If you are new to mindfulness, this is a wonderful book to read. If you have been practicing mindfulness, this is an excellent way to expand your horizons to keep your practice fresh.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had thought that this book would be something I would take a lot out of but it felt like we were separated by a layer of glass I can see what is on the other side. But I couldn't really grasp what was there.
Everytime I dove in nothing would really stick. Even now I'm finding it difficult to pull any memory of what I have read.
Which left me disappointed in myself in reality, because the nature focused approach of this feels new and intriguing. I feel like I will pick this book up again once spring begins starting to trickle in and maybe then this will better connect for me.