February 15, 2025 • 28 mins
This episode explores how nurturing our hearts impacts our mental landscapes and overall well-being, likening the mind to a beautiful garden needing love and attention. We discuss personal breakthroughs, the heart-brain connection, and practical steps for cultivating self-love and emotional healing.
• The concept of the brain as a botanical garden
• Heart-brain coherence and its significance
• Personal journey of self-discovery and insights
• Importance of recognizing emotional triggers
• Practical approaches to nurturing self-love
• Reflecting on Valentine's Day as a time for self-care
• Committing to cultivating one’s internal garden
Where you can find HeartMath Institute
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a Valentine's weekend episode, but not in the
way you might think.
Are you in love with you whenyou look in the mirror?
Do you love all that you see?
How about your life?
Do you love all that is aboutyour life?
What if I said your brain is agarden and outside the world,
(00:23):
outside of you, reflects howwell you tend to that garden.
Within your mind, as in themind, is a beautiful garden and
tapestry of our thoughts.
Just consider this concept,just consider it.
If your brain I mean yourgarden needs some tending to,
(00:46):
you need to hear this episode.
Welcome back to the IntuitiveMentor Mom Podcast, where we
explore strategies for growingconfidence, empowerment and
gaining clarity for midlife moms.
When life is happening for youand not to you, you can be
living the life of freedom, funand bliss.
I'm your host, tara, michelle.
(01:07):
Let's get to it.
Today we're going to talk aboutyour mind, or your brain, as
this beautiful garden.
So right after Christmas, I hada huge breakthrough around a
need, a need that I was unawareI had.
I was also unaware of how tocommunicate my need for this
(01:28):
need, which is possibly a storyfor another episode.
However, it's what brought meto this whole concept for myself
and I wanted to share it withyou.
So, in a number of manyconversations of processing this
incident with one of my bestfriends, I came to this aha and
(01:51):
was given a beautiful downloadby Spirit and I wanted to share
it with you because it reallyhas shifted my perspective and
how I begin to look at my life,especially after doing the
completion work that I did, youknow, at the end of 2024 and
ramping into 2025.
(02:11):
It was a download of our brainbeing a wild, lush, gorgeous
botanical garden and that ourlives in our outside world were
simply this reflection, like afunction, of the beauty and the
purity of this garden and howwell we tended to that garden.
(02:31):
And when the download came, itwas, you know, I don't know how
else to describe it.
It's almost like it's a bloomof color and visuals that come
from the top of my brain into mythird eye, like into my mind's
eye.
That's what I can.
It's like a bloom, it's like a,and that's why I call it a
(02:54):
download, because it literallycomes in like this bloom of
images and it's often very vividand vibrant, often very vivid
and vibrant, and so when I gotthis download, I could see the
inside of our cranium, so thecranium being a giant container
for the brain.
(03:14):
Okay, and the cranium is madeof lead glass windows.
Think about like a botanicalgarden or a greenhouse, right,
but it's lead pane, lead glasswindows, like these little boxes
with the lead in between, youknow, and when you're sitting
(03:35):
inside, you're looking out tothis starry, crystal clear, deep
blue sky outside crystal clear,deep blue sky outside.
Yet inside the cranium wasthese lush plants of deep greens
, golds, blues, hues of red.
(04:00):
There were funds and palms, andthey were all around.
And as I continued to see theimage of this garden, I noticed
that some areas of this gardenwithin my mind were lacking love
, seeming wilted and a littlebit dried up.
Okay, now, these parts of thegarden that I was seeing
actually reflected parts of mylife around me that I'd either
(04:25):
been ignoring or stuffing downwith outside distractions, and
that was something I really cameto as like.
A revelation at the end of lastyear was wow, I have this giant
distraction.
It was called online dating andit was really distracting a lot
of things that I needed to lookat for myself, and this
(04:47):
distraction was because therewas a fear for myself.
I didn't want to feel thefeelings that would surface in
my heart if I began to look atthese areas that I was
neglecting.
So, keyword here being heart,okay.
So put a pin in that, becausewe're gonna come back to that,
(05:08):
because I knew that if I tendedto these parts of my brain right
, the mind thoughts there wasgoing to be emotions that I
would have to now feel throughand most likely not enjoy the
way they felt.
So there was that, excuse me,and there were parts of the mind
, like inside my brain, in thisgarden, that I could see that
(05:28):
really needed some love andattention and some nourishing.
So this had me start to reallythink, because you know those of
you that are gardeners, any ofyou gardeners out there who are
my ladies that are gardeners andmen, hey, shout out.
It takes something, as you know, to have a gorgeous, lush
(05:50):
botanical garden.
It takes something to have agorgeous, lush veggie garden,
you know, one that reallyproduces food or flowers.
It literally takes time andattention every day to have a
gorgeous, well-nourished andloved garden that reflects the
fruits of your labor.
So then that got me thinkingwell, what would it take to
(06:13):
create that in my brain, suchthat my outer world is this pure
reflection of the cultivatingand the love and the nourishing
that I'm putting into my brainand I keep seeing it, like this
garden, you know, like the big,massive gardens that you see in
the middle of, like you know, Idon't know.
(06:35):
You know San Francisco, goldenGate Park.
You know Botanical Gardens inCentral Park, kew Gardens in
London, England, although I'venever been inside Kew Gardens,
although I've seen images and itlooks amazing, looks amazing,
right, and I'm going to put thaton my bucket list, by the way.
(06:58):
So there's also the saying ofyou are what you eat, and this
saying is not limited to you arewhat you breathe, you are what
you listen to, you are who youhang around and you are what you
watch.
Your brain is this data systemthat literally absorbs
(07:20):
everything it hears, sees,smells.
Everything it hears, sees,smells, tastes, listens to, all
of that information getspopulated up into there.
And you know there's thissaying about I think they've
scientifically proven that thebrain does not know the
(07:41):
difference between what is realand what is not real.
Brain does not know thedifference between what is real
and what is not real.
Therefore, everything that goesinto it it's computing, as this
is real, okay.
So, as I sat with this, it alsoinspired me to create my 2025
collage, and I referenced thatin episode 18 and 19.
(08:01):
I talk about, you know, thethings that I like to do, where
I complete and close the yearout and then I'll create a new
year, but one of the things Ilove to do every year is do a
collage.
So this year and I love it,it's beautiful, by the way I
chose to create a giant, massivebotanical garden on my collage,
evoking a mood and a feelingand being more of a metaphoric
(08:25):
state for myself, and being moreof a metaphoric state type of
collage rather than images ofthings that I wanted.
Right, usually, I'll put thingsthat I want and things that
represent the things that I wantand and this year I chose to
pull things that really spoke abeautiful garden, lush windows
(08:50):
you know the types of windows ofhow I saw the cranium doors
opening into different parts ofthe mind.
There was even this corner.
On the corner is like a dooropens into this beautiful
bedroom, because, as I saw it, Iwas like, oh, you know, this is
where I go to retreat for rest.
And then I found which wasamazing.
(09:12):
I found this image of abeautiful garden with, like,
there was a couch and chairs,but the couch and the chairs are
made of what also looked likeit was coming up out of the
garden floor right, and thenthere was this beautiful lamp
hanging coming out of the garden, like coming through the top,
and it's very lush and beautiful.
(09:33):
And I was like, oh, that's theimage of where my guides and my
higher being and or my higherpower and God, like, come and
they convene when I, when I'mdreaming, we're convening in
this place, in the, in the lushgarden.
You know, this is where this iswhere things start to happen.
And here's what I will say.
My dreams have been off thechart lately this year, and I
(09:55):
would imagine all of you,because we're just going through
some massive energy shifts andenergy changes.
But it's been amazing becausewhen I created that collage, I
really said to myself every timeI look at this, it's going to
remind me of am I tending tothat garden and am I pouring
(10:17):
love into that garden?
Because if I am, my world isgoing to begin to reflect that.
Who I see in the mirror willreflect that.
What I see in the world willreflect that.
My situations and circumstanceswill begin to reflect that.
Now one might think how is thisrelated to Valentine's Day's day
(10:39):
, tara?
Because a lot of times withvalentine's day, people get
depressed.
There's such a focus onpartnership, partnership,
partnership, romance, romance,love.
And why I want to bring this upis because, hey, I'm single
this valentine's day and it'sbeen beautiful, I spent it with
my son, but I wanted to talkabout this because I'm also
(11:00):
spending it with myself.
Like, how do I love myself?
Like there's nothing to bedepressed about.
You know, life is good, Life isgreat, and what are we doing to
cultivate that garden within,to make it greater?
Okay, so fast forward, a fewweeks later, having yet another
conversation with this bestfriend of mine, who I just love
(11:20):
her because we get together andwe'll have these little powwows
and all these really coolinsights will come up.
But I was processing morethoughts around my journey of
romantic love, okay, and seeingthe distractions, seeing where I
was missing things for myselfand not paying attention to
these aspects of myself.
But it was in that moment, as Iwas talking to her, I started
(11:43):
talking about, you know,cultivating this mind garden,
this brain garden, and thenstarted recognizing oh, oh, but
wait, I also know that the brainis connected to the heart.
Like there's a heart braincoherence conversation going on
and then it dawned on me I waslike, omg, the bulb, the root of
(12:09):
my garden is my heart.
So let's talk about heart braincoherence really quick, okay?
Back in 2014, I was actuallyintroduced to heart-brain
coherence through a companycalled HeartMath Institute,
which many of you listening mayhave heard of them.
If you have not, I highlyrecommend you go check them out.
(12:29):
Heartmath Institute.
I was living in Santa Cruz,california, at the time, and
they literally were down thestreet.
They were down the street inthe well, it doesn't matter,
they were in the Santa Cruzmountains.
I'm trying to, I'm trying toremember.
It's Scott's Valley, so theywere in Scott's Valley and or
maybe it was Ben Lomond, I don'tknow, but they're.
(12:50):
They're up there.
They're up there in the woods,and we were living in the woods
up there.
So I used one of their productsthe first products that had
come out and I have to say itwas really awesome, because I
did experience this euphoricstate of peacefulness and less
stress in my life.
Now I'm going to admit that Ihave not stayed rigorous with
(13:14):
that, but I do still practiceheart-brain coherence, just a
little differently.
But I actually want to get backto some of the things that they
do because it's awesome.
So let's talk about some factsabout the brain and the heart.
I'm going to drop this in aswell.
So do you know that the heartand the brain, which are two
(13:38):
organs, those two organs supportthe neural network within the
body.
Okay, so your neural network ofnerves.
They control that, the heartand the brain.
Yes, there's also connection tothe gut, but we're not going to
get into the gut today.
To the gut, but we're not goingto get into the gut today.
(13:58):
But I will say that the brain,the heart and we'll say the gut
too, are connected by thebiggest nerve in the body, which
is called the vagus nerve.
So look up vagus nerve, becausethere's a lot of healing around
the vagus nerve as well when itcomes to stress, food, anxiety,
(14:19):
lots of things attributed andattached to that vagus nerve,
which runs through our spine,goes through the base of the
brain, down the spine, connectsinto the heart, goes, continues
to go down, what would you callthat?
The thoracic area, into the gut.
Okay, now, in 1991, they saythey discovered, but I'm gonna
(14:41):
assert that somebody knew thisbefore 1991, but let's just say
doctors then said okay, we'vevalidated that this is truth.
They discovered that the hearthas the thickest nerve bundle
within the body and not onlydoes it think, but it can feel
and it can rememberindependently from the body.
And not only does it think, butit can feel and it can remember
independently from the brain.
(15:03):
So just wrap your head aroundthat, because so often we have
been conditioned to believe thatthe heart and the brain are two
separate things.
Okay, like they don't gotogether.
You get the brain up in thecranium area and you've got your
heart down behind your chestcavity.
Okay, however, the heart holdsthe thickest nerve bundle in the
(15:29):
body and the heart thinks, theheart thinks.
Okay, the heart feels and theheart remembers independently
from the brain.
Now, these two neural networkscan be harmonized to work
(15:51):
together, and there's actuallythree steps that they do this,
but I'm not going to go intothat today.
And when these two organs areharmonized together, they create
a powerful chemical andenergetic connection in our body
, harmonizing feelings andemotions in a frequency within
(16:14):
your body, and that's calledcoherence within your body, and
that's called coherence, that'sheart-brain coherence, and the
heart signals the brain andoptimizes the thoughts which are
in the brain.
Okay, did you hear thatOptimizes?
So what kind of thoughts do youhave running in your brain
Positive, negative?
(16:35):
What kinds of feelings andthoughts are attached to the
heart Positive, negative?
What kinds of feelings andthoughts are attached to the
heart Positive, negative?
Because when we optimize, whenwe bring those together and
harmonize them, it's optimized.
Do you hear where I'm goingwith this?
You may or may not see this,but now we can actually look at.
(16:58):
How is your world reflecting toyou?
Okay, so what they also saw isthat the heart was actually
communicating more with thebrain than the brain going down
to the heart.
So imagine these.
(17:18):
You know, when they startlooking at the neurons and the
firing, the synapses andeverything's you know firing off
, they saw more of that activityoccurring in the heart actually
being signaled back up to thebrain versus the brain signaling
it back down.
So what does that mean?
It means your heart is chief incommand.
So let's get back to the gardenin our mind.
(17:40):
Okay, that's a little snapshot.
If you want to learn more aboutheart brain coherence, you can
Google it, you can go intoYouTube.
Greg Braden's got cool stuff,heartmath has cool stuff, Bruce
Lipton has cool stuff.
There's a lot of stuff outthere around brain and heart
coherence.
(18:00):
So let's get back to the gardenin our mind.
And if we're to nurture,cultivate and grow this
fantastic garden in our mind,which then will have our world
reflect that life we wish tolive, it begins at the root and
the seed, or what I like to callthe bulb, which is our heart.
(18:23):
So the heart, literally, is thekey to experiencing the world
you truly desire, which I thinkis the coolest thing.
And the mind cannot flourishinto this abundant garden if
your heart is harboring pain andsadness.
Now, I'm not sure if it'spossible to completely heal your
(18:45):
heart, that you'll never havepain or sadness, but maybe it's
a possibility because life isalways happening, right, life is
always happening for us.
But it is possible to clean outand clear out a lot of that old
trauma that's sitting in theback of the heart, the front of
the heart, in the upper heartand lower heart.
(19:07):
So there's different componentsof the heart in which you store
that traumatic energy.
And so imagine you startlooking at your heart as this
beautiful organ that's.
You know, it's the powerhouse,it's the center of all of what
is in your world.
Okay, so not to go too deep inthis today, but what I saw, that
(19:36):
was next for myself when I washaving all of these ahas, and
what I wanted to share with youbecause I just felt it was so
profound and so beautiful.
What I saw next was for me toreally sit with the metaphor of
my brain or my mind being thisbeautiful botanical garden and
(19:57):
allowing myself to play with it,such that I would begin to
quote unquote mind garden, withwild abashed creativity and
bringing attention to whatreally has me experience love,
love of self, love of my life,love for others at a new level,
(20:18):
really nourishing that space andhaving profound gratitude when
I'm sitting and being in thisinner, connected garden that I
call you know, I actually callit my brain tentacle garden, but
this beautiful space called me.
This is my inner, my inner self.
(20:40):
You know where love starts withme, which then can overflow to
my son, which then can overflowto my family.
You know, which then canoverflow to to my friends, which
then can overflow to when apartner arrives in my life,
which can then overflow into mycareer and into every action in
(21:03):
my life, right and, moreimportantly, bringing my
attention to where my gardenneeds tending to.
Where is that seed?
My heart or the bulb my heartlacking nourishment?
So one might say, okay, well,how do you do that?
So one way that I startbringing awareness to those
(21:26):
areas of the heart that needhealing and I'll tie this back
to the original incident thatoccurred that had me even come
to this place is I had asituation with a beautiful
friend that I care very muchabout, where I was so triggered
in a moment that it caused me torecognize this need that was
(21:48):
missing in my life and that wasmissing in that moment.
So what I do by bringingawareness is when my, let's say,
you okay.
When your initial response tosomething is anger or
frustration, you know you'retriggered.
That's your signal.
That's your signal that there'ssomething happening in your
heart and there's something togo to work on Now.
(22:10):
It doesn't mean you have to goto work on it that day.
You may not feel like it, youmay not be.
You'll be like Tara.
I'm not going to go to work onmy heart that hard.
I'm not going to go work on allmy shit.
Fine, don't.
But this is what I do, becauseI do work on my shit all the
time because it's important tome.
It's important to me to healthese parts of my heart and heal
(22:32):
my life, because I want toexperience the richness and the
fullness of life.
So, when you have that initialresponse, where it's anger or
frustration, that's a signal foryou to look at what you're
needing in that moment and thismight be the tricky part,
because it was tricky for me toreally get.
Oh, my God, there's somethingI'm needing right now.
(22:53):
That's why I'm reacting thisway.
And as I began to look in myGod, there's something I'm
needing right now.
That's why I'm reacting thisway.
And as I began to look in myheart, which is the bulb, the
root and the seed, I startedasking what's missing.
What's missing in this moment,and it was to be heard and it
was to be hugged in that moment.
(23:15):
That's what was missing for me.
I needed a hug that day and Ididn't even know it in the state
that I was at.
Now back to, how do you do this?
How do you bring awareness tothis?
When you have that initialfeeling of anger and frustration
that signals you likesomething's wrong.
You ask yourself what's missing.
You know, take a breath andjust close your eyes and go deep
(23:38):
into your body, go into yourheart.
Is it that you need to be heardin that moment?
Do you need to be hugged inthat moment like I did?
Do you need to be understood orseen in that moment?
Do you feel you're not beingheard in that moment?
What is it in that moment thatis driving the response?
And if you allow yourself to bestill in that moment and ask
(24:01):
your heart, what are you needing?
It's going to respond.
It's going to respond.
I just did it again the otherday and in that moment what I
was feeling was rejection and Ifelt into it and realized there
is no rejection.
The only person rejecting me ismyself in this moment.
(24:23):
Because I'm rejecting thatfeeling I don't want to feel in
my heart.
I'm rejecting allowing myselfto open that door and say, oh,
what's behind door number 25?
Oh, it's still trapped.
Sadness, thinking that you'rerejected and there's something
wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with you,so let that shit out.
At least that's what I wassaying to myself.
And from there, how do youbegin to heal and nurture that
(24:47):
part of the garden.
How do you heal and nourish theseed and your root?
Remember, your root is yourheart the seed, the bulb, the
root, the heart.
I'm going to leave you withthree things that I like to do
to begin that process of lovingmyself and my life more.
First, I become aware there's atrigger, there's a need and
(25:09):
there's a frustration in my body.
That's number one.
Like first, I have to recognizeit.
I did the other morning.
I had a conversation with afriend and I had a feeling
coming up and I had to firstbecome aware of it and it
started bringing up tears.
That feeling like the pain.
I was like, oh shit, here'sthat feeling.
(25:29):
I don't want that feeling.
Two, allow yourself to sit inthe emotions with zero story and
allow yourself to really feelthe depth of emotion.
So in that moment the othermorning, when I was feeling this
, I just allowed myself you knowwhat, I'm going to allow myself
the tears.
I'm going to allow it to comeup and I breathed into my heart
(25:52):
and I closed my eyes and I askedlike what is there?
And I heard that it wasrejection and then I said
release that.
Release that, because there'snothing there except for an
emotion, an emotion that needsto come up and out of my system
(26:14):
and I allowed myself to feel it,to cry it out and to not attach
it to that person that I wastalking to or to me.
I just was like I'm just goingto feel this.
It needs to come up and out.
And then I ask myself what do Ineed at that moment?
And I wait for the answer toemerge.
I ask myself in that moment andI wait for the answer to emerge
(26:39):
.
I ask myself what is it that Ineed?
And I needed to just be heardand to be accepted and for what
I said to be received.
That's it.
And so what I had to do formyself was I had to hear myself,
I had to accept for myself andI needed to receive for myself.
(27:01):
Nobody outside of me could dothat for me.
So in the next episode, I'mgoing to share more about how I
then move through those spacesof healing the garden and
cultivating the growth in thoseareas.
And where you have weeds, youknow like go look, do you have
(27:24):
root rot?
Do you have weeds?
Is there deadness in that bulb,that beautiful heart of yours?
Like, be honest, be truthfulwith yourself.
What's there?
There's always opportunity toheal, expand and grow.
So I'm curious if any of thishas resonated for you and if
(27:44):
you're able to consider yourbrain and your heart in this way
, like when standing in themiddle of this beautiful mind
garden.
Just imagine and envision it.
What do you see?
What would you create?
Do you want more color?
Do you want more serenity?
Do you want more calm?
(28:07):
Do you want more vibrancy?
Do you want more food,nourishing?
What is it that you desire inyour garden?
What areas of your life needyour tender care and attention?
Let me know what you create.
I'm always inspired by others'ideas.
I look forward to seeing you onthe next episode and happy
(28:29):
gardening.
Thank you for coming on thishealing adventure today.
If you're starting to see howeverything is falling into place
for you, consider rating theshow and sharing it with one of
your friends.
Keep that spirit alive and joinme next week.
Same place, same time.
Have a great week.
This is a Valentine's weekend episode, but not in the
way you might think.
Are you in love with you whenyou look in the mirror?
Do you love all that you see?
How about your life?
Do you love all that is aboutyour life?
What if I said your brain is agarden and outside the world,
(00:23):
outside of you, reflects howwell you tend to that garden.
Within your mind, as in themind, is a beautiful garden and
tapestry of our thoughts.
Just consider this concept,just consider it.
If your brain I mean yourgarden needs some tending to,
(00:46):
you need to hear this episode.
Welcome back to the IntuitiveMentor Mom Podcast, where we
explore strategies for growingconfidence, empowerment and
gaining clarity for midlife moms.
When life is happening for youand not to you, you can be
living the life of freedom, funand bliss.
I'm your host, tara, michelle.
(01:07):
Let's get to it.
Today we're going to talk aboutyour mind, or your brain, as
this beautiful garden.
So right after Christmas, I hada huge breakthrough around a
need, a need that I was unawareI had.
I was also unaware of how tocommunicate my need for this
(01:28):
need, which is possibly a storyfor another episode.
However, it's what brought meto this whole concept for myself
and I wanted to share it withyou.
So, in a number of manyconversations of processing this
incident with one of my bestfriends, I came to this aha and
(01:51):
was given a beautiful downloadby Spirit and I wanted to share
it with you because it reallyhas shifted my perspective and
how I begin to look at my life,especially after doing the
completion work that I did, youknow, at the end of 2024 and
ramping into 2025.
(02:11):
It was a download of our brainbeing a wild, lush, gorgeous
botanical garden and that ourlives in our outside world were
simply this reflection, like afunction, of the beauty and the
purity of this garden and howwell we tended to that garden.
(02:31):
And when the download came, itwas, you know, I don't know how
else to describe it.
It's almost like it's a bloomof color and visuals that come
from the top of my brain into mythird eye, like into my mind's
eye.
That's what I can.
It's like a bloom, it's like a,and that's why I call it a
(02:54):
download, because it literallycomes in like this bloom of
images and it's often very vividand vibrant, often very vivid
and vibrant, and so when I gotthis download, I could see the
inside of our cranium, so thecranium being a giant container
for the brain.
(03:14):
Okay, and the cranium is madeof lead glass windows.
Think about like a botanicalgarden or a greenhouse, right,
but it's lead pane, lead glasswindows, like these little boxes
with the lead in between, youknow, and when you're sitting
(03:35):
inside, you're looking out tothis starry, crystal clear, deep
blue sky outside crystal clear,deep blue sky outside.
Yet inside the cranium wasthese lush plants of deep greens
, golds, blues, hues of red.
(04:00):
There were funds and palms, andthey were all around.
And as I continued to see theimage of this garden, I noticed
that some areas of this gardenwithin my mind were lacking love
, seeming wilted and a littlebit dried up.
Okay, now, these parts of thegarden that I was seeing
actually reflected parts of mylife around me that I'd either
(04:25):
been ignoring or stuffing downwith outside distractions, and
that was something I really cameto as like.
A revelation at the end of lastyear was wow, I have this giant
distraction.
It was called online dating andit was really distracting a lot
of things that I needed to lookat for myself, and this
(04:47):
distraction was because therewas a fear for myself.
I didn't want to feel thefeelings that would surface in
my heart if I began to look atthese areas that I was
neglecting.
So, keyword here being heart,okay.
So put a pin in that, becausewe're gonna come back to that,
(05:08):
because I knew that if I tendedto these parts of my brain right
, the mind thoughts there wasgoing to be emotions that I
would have to now feel throughand most likely not enjoy the
way they felt.
So there was that, excuse me,and there were parts of the mind
, like inside my brain, in thisgarden, that I could see that
(05:28):
really needed some love andattention and some nourishing.
So this had me start to reallythink, because you know those of
you that are gardeners, any ofyou gardeners out there who are
my ladies that are gardeners andmen, hey, shout out.
It takes something, as you know, to have a gorgeous, lush
(05:50):
botanical garden.
It takes something to have agorgeous, lush veggie garden,
you know, one that reallyproduces food or flowers.
It literally takes time andattention every day to have a
gorgeous, well-nourished andloved garden that reflects the
fruits of your labor.
So then that got me thinkingwell, what would it take to
(06:13):
create that in my brain, suchthat my outer world is this pure
reflection of the cultivatingand the love and the nourishing
that I'm putting into my brainand I keep seeing it, like this
garden, you know, like the big,massive gardens that you see in
the middle of, like you know, Idon't know.
(06:35):
You know San Francisco, goldenGate Park.
You know Botanical Gardens inCentral Park, kew Gardens in
London, England, although I'venever been inside Kew Gardens,
although I've seen images and itlooks amazing, looks amazing,
right, and I'm going to put thaton my bucket list, by the way.
(06:58):
So there's also the saying ofyou are what you eat, and this
saying is not limited to you arewhat you breathe, you are what
you listen to, you are who youhang around and you are what you
watch.
Your brain is this data systemthat literally absorbs
(07:20):
everything it hears, sees,smells.
Everything it hears, sees,smells, tastes, listens to, all
of that information getspopulated up into there.
And you know there's thissaying about I think they've
scientifically proven that thebrain does not know the
(07:41):
difference between what is realand what is not real.
Brain does not know thedifference between what is real
and what is not real.
Therefore, everything that goesinto it it's computing, as this
is real, okay.
So, as I sat with this, it alsoinspired me to create my 2025
collage, and I referenced thatin episode 18 and 19.
(08:01):
I talk about, you know, thethings that I like to do, where
I complete and close the yearout and then I'll create a new
year, but one of the things Ilove to do every year is do a
collage.
So this year and I love it,it's beautiful, by the way I
chose to create a giant, massivebotanical garden on my collage,
evoking a mood and a feelingand being more of a metaphoric
(08:25):
state for myself, and being moreof a metaphoric state type of
collage rather than images ofthings that I wanted.
Right, usually, I'll put thingsthat I want and things that
represent the things that I wantand and this year I chose to
pull things that really spoke abeautiful garden, lush windows
(08:50):
you know the types of windows ofhow I saw the cranium doors
opening into different parts ofthe mind.
There was even this corner.
On the corner is like a dooropens into this beautiful
bedroom, because, as I saw it, Iwas like, oh, you know, this is
where I go to retreat for rest.
And then I found which wasamazing.
(09:12):
I found this image of abeautiful garden with, like,
there was a couch and chairs,but the couch and the chairs are
made of what also looked likeit was coming up out of the
garden floor right, and thenthere was this beautiful lamp
hanging coming out of the garden, like coming through the top,
and it's very lush and beautiful.
(09:33):
And I was like, oh, that's theimage of where my guides and my
higher being and or my higherpower and God, like, come and
they convene when I, when I'mdreaming, we're convening in
this place, in the, in the lushgarden.
You know, this is where this iswhere things start to happen.
And here's what I will say.
My dreams have been off thechart lately this year, and I
(09:55):
would imagine all of you,because we're just going through
some massive energy shifts andenergy changes.
But it's been amazing becausewhen I created that collage, I
really said to myself every timeI look at this, it's going to
remind me of am I tending tothat garden and am I pouring
(10:17):
love into that garden?
Because if I am, my world isgoing to begin to reflect that.
Who I see in the mirror willreflect that.
What I see in the world willreflect that.
My situations and circumstanceswill begin to reflect that.
Now one might think how is thisrelated to Valentine's Day's day
(10:39):
, tara?
Because a lot of times withvalentine's day, people get
depressed.
There's such a focus onpartnership, partnership,
partnership, romance, romance,love.
And why I want to bring this upis because, hey, I'm single
this valentine's day and it'sbeen beautiful, I spent it with
my son, but I wanted to talkabout this because I'm also
(11:00):
spending it with myself.
Like, how do I love myself?
Like there's nothing to bedepressed about.
You know, life is good, Life isgreat, and what are we doing to
cultivate that garden within,to make it greater?
Okay, so fast forward, a fewweeks later, having yet another
conversation with this bestfriend of mine, who I just love
(11:20):
her because we get together andwe'll have these little powwows
and all these really coolinsights will come up.
But I was processing morethoughts around my journey of
romantic love, okay, and seeingthe distractions, seeing where I
was missing things for myselfand not paying attention to
these aspects of myself.
But it was in that moment, as Iwas talking to her, I started
(11:43):
talking about, you know,cultivating this mind garden,
this brain garden, and thenstarted recognizing oh, oh, but
wait, I also know that the brainis connected to the heart.
Like there's a heart braincoherence conversation going on
and then it dawned on me I waslike, omg, the bulb, the root of
(12:09):
my garden is my heart.
So let's talk about heart braincoherence really quick, okay?
Back in 2014, I was actuallyintroduced to heart-brain
coherence through a companycalled HeartMath Institute,
which many of you listening mayhave heard of them.
If you have not, I highlyrecommend you go check them out.
(12:29):
Heartmath Institute.
I was living in Santa Cruz,california, at the time, and
they literally were down thestreet.
They were down the street inthe well, it doesn't matter,
they were in the Santa Cruzmountains.
I'm trying to, I'm trying toremember.
It's Scott's Valley, so theywere in Scott's Valley and or
maybe it was Ben Lomond, I don'tknow, but they're.
(12:50):
They're up there.
They're up there in the woods,and we were living in the woods
up there.
So I used one of their productsthe first products that had
come out and I have to say itwas really awesome, because I
did experience this euphoricstate of peacefulness and less
stress in my life.
Now I'm going to admit that Ihave not stayed rigorous with
(13:14):
that, but I do still practiceheart-brain coherence, just a
little differently.
But I actually want to get backto some of the things that they
do because it's awesome.
So let's talk about some factsabout the brain and the heart.
I'm going to drop this in aswell.
So do you know that the heartand the brain, which are two
(13:38):
organs, those two organs supportthe neural network within the
body.
Okay, so your neural network ofnerves.
They control that, the heartand the brain.
Yes, there's also connection tothe gut, but we're not going to
get into the gut today.
To the gut, but we're not goingto get into the gut today.
(13:58):
But I will say that the brain,the heart and we'll say the gut
too, are connected by thebiggest nerve in the body, which
is called the vagus nerve.
So look up vagus nerve, becausethere's a lot of healing around
the vagus nerve as well when itcomes to stress, food, anxiety,
(14:19):
lots of things attributed andattached to that vagus nerve,
which runs through our spine,goes through the base of the
brain, down the spine, connectsinto the heart, goes, continues
to go down, what would you callthat?
The thoracic area, into the gut.
Okay, now, in 1991, they saythey discovered, but I'm gonna
(14:41):
assert that somebody knew thisbefore 1991, but let's just say
doctors then said okay, we'vevalidated that this is truth.
They discovered that the hearthas the thickest nerve bundle
within the body and not onlydoes it think, but it can feel
and it can rememberindependently from the body.
And not only does it think, butit can feel and it can remember
independently from the brain.
(15:03):
So just wrap your head aroundthat, because so often we have
been conditioned to believe thatthe heart and the brain are two
separate things.
Okay, like they don't gotogether.
You get the brain up in thecranium area and you've got your
heart down behind your chestcavity.
Okay, however, the heart holdsthe thickest nerve bundle in the
(15:29):
body and the heart thinks, theheart thinks.
Okay, the heart feels and theheart remembers independently
from the brain.
Now, these two neural networkscan be harmonized to work
(15:51):
together, and there's actuallythree steps that they do this,
but I'm not going to go intothat today.
And when these two organs areharmonized together, they create
a powerful chemical andenergetic connection in our body
, harmonizing feelings andemotions in a frequency within
(16:14):
your body, and that's calledcoherence within your body, and
that's called coherence, that'sheart-brain coherence, and the
heart signals the brain andoptimizes the thoughts which are
in the brain.
Okay, did you hear thatOptimizes?
So what kind of thoughts do youhave running in your brain
Positive, negative?
(16:35):
What kinds of feelings andthoughts are attached to the
heart Positive, negative?
What kinds of feelings andthoughts are attached to the
heart Positive, negative?
Because when we optimize, whenwe bring those together and
harmonize them, it's optimized.
Do you hear where I'm goingwith this?
You may or may not see this,but now we can actually look at.
(16:58):
How is your world reflecting toyou?
Okay, so what they also saw isthat the heart was actually
communicating more with thebrain than the brain going down
to the heart.
So imagine these.
(17:18):
You know, when they startlooking at the neurons and the
firing, the synapses andeverything's you know firing off
, they saw more of that activityoccurring in the heart actually
being signaled back up to thebrain versus the brain signaling
it back down.
So what does that mean?
It means your heart is chief incommand.
So let's get back to the gardenin our mind.
(17:40):
Okay, that's a little snapshot.
If you want to learn more aboutheart brain coherence, you can
Google it, you can go intoYouTube.
Greg Braden's got cool stuff,heartmath has cool stuff, Bruce
Lipton has cool stuff.
There's a lot of stuff outthere around brain and heart
coherence.
(18:00):
So let's get back to the gardenin our mind.
And if we're to nurture,cultivate and grow this
fantastic garden in our mind,which then will have our world
reflect that life we wish tolive, it begins at the root and
the seed, or what I like to callthe bulb, which is our heart.
(18:23):
So the heart, literally, is thekey to experiencing the world
you truly desire, which I thinkis the coolest thing.
And the mind cannot flourishinto this abundant garden if
your heart is harboring pain andsadness.
Now, I'm not sure if it'spossible to completely heal your
(18:45):
heart, that you'll never havepain or sadness, but maybe it's
a possibility because life isalways happening, right, life is
always happening for us.
But it is possible to clean outand clear out a lot of that old
trauma that's sitting in theback of the heart, the front of
the heart, in the upper heartand lower heart.
(19:07):
So there's different componentsof the heart in which you store
that traumatic energy.
And so imagine you startlooking at your heart as this
beautiful organ that's.
You know, it's the powerhouse,it's the center of all of what
is in your world.
Okay, so not to go too deep inthis today, but what I saw, that
(19:36):
was next for myself when I washaving all of these ahas, and
what I wanted to share with youbecause I just felt it was so
profound and so beautiful.
What I saw next was for me toreally sit with the metaphor of
my brain or my mind being thisbeautiful botanical garden and
(19:57):
allowing myself to play with it,such that I would begin to
quote unquote mind garden, withwild abashed creativity and
bringing attention to whatreally has me experience love,
love of self, love of my life,love for others at a new level,
(20:18):
really nourishing that space andhaving profound gratitude when
I'm sitting and being in thisinner, connected garden that I
call you know, I actually callit my brain tentacle garden, but
this beautiful space called me.
This is my inner, my inner self.
(20:40):
You know where love starts withme, which then can overflow to
my son, which then can overflowto my family.
You know, which then canoverflow to to my friends, which
then can overflow to when apartner arrives in my life,
which can then overflow into mycareer and into every action in
(21:03):
my life, right and, moreimportantly, bringing my
attention to where my gardenneeds tending to.
Where is that seed?
My heart or the bulb my heartlacking nourishment?
So one might say, okay, well,how do you do that?
So one way that I startbringing awareness to those
(21:26):
areas of the heart that needhealing and I'll tie this back
to the original incident thatoccurred that had me even come
to this place is I had asituation with a beautiful
friend that I care very muchabout, where I was so triggered
in a moment that it caused me torecognize this need that was
(21:48):
missing in my life and that wasmissing in that moment.
So what I do by bringingawareness is when my, let's say,
you okay.
When your initial response tosomething is anger or
frustration, you know you'retriggered.
That's your signal.
That's your signal that there'ssomething happening in your
heart and there's something togo to work on Now.
(22:10):
It doesn't mean you have to goto work on it that day.
You may not feel like it, youmay not be.
You'll be like Tara.
I'm not going to go to work onmy heart that hard.
I'm not going to go work on allmy shit.
Fine, don't.
But this is what I do, becauseI do work on my shit all the
time because it's important tome.
It's important to me to healthese parts of my heart and heal
(22:32):
my life, because I want toexperience the richness and the
fullness of life.
So, when you have that initialresponse, where it's anger or
frustration, that's a signal foryou to look at what you're
needing in that moment and thismight be the tricky part,
because it was tricky for me toreally get.
Oh, my God, there's somethingI'm needing right now.
(22:53):
That's why I'm reacting thisway.
And as I began to look in myGod, there's something I'm
needing right now.
That's why I'm reacting thisway.
And as I began to look in myheart, which is the bulb, the
root and the seed, I startedasking what's missing.
What's missing in this moment,and it was to be heard and it
was to be hugged in that moment.
(23:15):
That's what was missing for me.
I needed a hug that day and Ididn't even know it in the state
that I was at.
Now back to, how do you do this?
How do you bring awareness tothis?
When you have that initialfeeling of anger and frustration
that signals you likesomething's wrong.
You ask yourself what's missing.
You know, take a breath andjust close your eyes and go deep
(23:38):
into your body, go into yourheart.
Is it that you need to be heardin that moment?
Do you need to be hugged inthat moment like I did?
Do you need to be understood orseen in that moment?
Do you feel you're not beingheard in that moment?
What is it in that moment thatis driving the response?
And if you allow yourself to bestill in that moment and ask
(24:01):
your heart, what are you needing?
It's going to respond.
It's going to respond.
I just did it again the otherday and in that moment what I
was feeling was rejection and Ifelt into it and realized there
is no rejection.
The only person rejecting me ismyself in this moment.
(24:23):
Because I'm rejecting thatfeeling I don't want to feel in
my heart.
I'm rejecting allowing myselfto open that door and say, oh,
what's behind door number 25?
Oh, it's still trapped.
Sadness, thinking that you'rerejected and there's something
wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with you,so let that shit out.
At least that's what I wassaying to myself.
And from there, how do youbegin to heal and nurture that
(24:47):
part of the garden.
How do you heal and nourish theseed and your root?
Remember, your root is yourheart the seed, the bulb, the
root, the heart.
I'm going to leave you withthree things that I like to do
to begin that process of lovingmyself and my life more.
First, I become aware there's atrigger, there's a need and
(25:09):
there's a frustration in my body.
That's number one.
Like first, I have to recognizeit.
I did the other morning.
I had a conversation with afriend and I had a feeling
coming up and I had to firstbecome aware of it and it
started bringing up tears.
That feeling like the pain.
I was like, oh shit, here'sthat feeling.
(25:29):
I don't want that feeling.
Two, allow yourself to sit inthe emotions with zero story and
allow yourself to really feelthe depth of emotion.
So in that moment the othermorning, when I was feeling this
, I just allowed myself you knowwhat, I'm going to allow myself
the tears.
I'm going to allow it to comeup and I breathed into my heart
(25:52):
and I closed my eyes and I askedlike what is there?
And I heard that it wasrejection and then I said
release that.
Release that, because there'snothing there except for an
emotion, an emotion that needsto come up and out of my system
(26:14):
and I allowed myself to feel it,to cry it out and to not attach
it to that person that I wastalking to or to me.
I just was like I'm just goingto feel this.
It needs to come up and out.
And then I ask myself what do Ineed at that moment?
And I wait for the answer toemerge.
I ask myself in that moment andI wait for the answer to emerge
(26:39):
.
I ask myself what is it that Ineed?
And I needed to just be heardand to be accepted and for what
I said to be received.
That's it.
And so what I had to do formyself was I had to hear myself,
I had to accept for myself andI needed to receive for myself.
(27:01):
Nobody outside of me could dothat for me.
So in the next episode, I'mgoing to share more about how I
then move through those spacesof healing the garden and
cultivating the growth in thoseareas.
And where you have weeds, youknow like go look, do you have
(27:24):
root rot?
Do you have weeds?
Is there deadness in that bulb,that beautiful heart of yours?
Like, be honest, be truthfulwith yourself.
What's there?
There's always opportunity toheal, expand and grow.
So I'm curious if any of thishas resonated for you and if
(27:44):
you're able to consider yourbrain and your heart in this way
, like when standing in themiddle of this beautiful mind
garden.
Just imagine and envision it.
What do you see?
What would you create?
Do you want more color?
Do you want more serenity?
Do you want more calm?
(28:07):
Do you want more vibrancy?
Do you want more food,nourishing?
What is it that you desire inyour garden?
What areas of your life needyour tender care and attention?
Let me know what you create.
I'm always inspired by others'ideas.
I look forward to seeing you onthe next episode and happy
(28:29):
gardening.
Thank you for coming on thishealing adventure today.
If you're starting to see howeverything is falling into place
for you, consider rating theshow and sharing it with one of
your friends.
Keep that spirit alive and joinme next week.
Same place, same time.
Have a great week.
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