Digging Deeper

Digging deeper in myself has brought a new dimension to digging in my garden.

Several years ago, I began recognizing the fact that no matter how much attention I paid to body mechanics, I invariably threw my back out from digging. Eventually, I turned my vegetable beds into wild-flower gardens to avoid injuring myself.

This year however, a young friend has been helping me garden. Between the two of us, we decided to use one of the beds for vegetables. The other two she prepared and seeded with wildflowers.

Having determined extra digging was needed to prepare the vegetable bed I went out early one morning—there was the fresh day and the first birdsong, as I’d remembered. It didn’t take long before the old backache reappeared too, just as I’d remembered. As I put away my shovel, I knew I would have to go back to finish the job since my friend wasn’t available, and I’d already bought plants.

So out I went the next morning. I worked methodically down a row—thrusting, lifting, stooping to throw unearthed grassroots into the basket. By the end of the first lane, my back was talking to me, big time. I stopped. Standing up, out of breath, my hands bracing my lower back, I started doing the “I Am” exercise. I pulled my attention away from my back and consciously followed the air—in through my nose, into my lungs, and out again. Three conscious breaths. I listened to the birds, and I felt the joy of being outside so early in the morning digging a garden.

Conscious Digging

I went back to work. Thrust, lift, dump, stoop to pick out roots. It wasn’t long before I needed to stop again. This time I wondered if the morning exercise I’d been working on could be done at the same time as digging. Still standing, I spent a minute bringing sensation into my right arm. The exercise involved keeping sensation in my arm, then moving it with my attention from the right arm into the right leg, and so on around the limbs. I started concentrating on this as I dug.

As I focused my attention on sensing a limb, another part of my awareness heard thoughts. Refocusing on sensation again and again, I saw these threads of thought tending to the negative. For example, I heard an internal mantra, “There’s no good grassroot but a dead grassroot!”  The real ah-ha, however, was feeling my muscles tense while having those seemingly innocent thoughts.

Once I saw that, I dug deeper inside myself to keep physically sensing a limb, moving the sensation intentionally, and wishing to do this conscious work while digging. When I was fully engaged inwardly, I was surprised to find my muscles didn’t tighten from thoughts running through my mind and I could work without crippling myself.

By the end of the session, I’d completed the exercise, the garden bed was ready, and all my aches and pains from digging had mysteriously melted away.