Mindfulness Garden Games
by Joann Calabrese
author of Growing Mindful

A New Year’s Mindfulness Experiment – Exploring One Concept a Week

A Mindful Experiment My intention for the new year is to take one concept each week – just ONE – and dive into it in a focused and mindful way and see what happens – a mindfulness experiment of sorts.  My hope is that I’ll be able to reach a deeper understanding and integrate it … Read more

My Four Point Plan for Dispelling the Darkness – thoughts on the longest night of the year

Winter solstice always carries the symbolism of light dispelling darkness. That image seems particularly comforting right now as we have entered a dark period in which people full of hate and mean intentions have captured the castle.  After weeks of mucking around in the darkness, I am ready to embrace the light.  I’ve written a … Read more

The Wild August Garden

It’s late August and my garden is a chaotic, wild, and beautiful “mess”. The pumpkin vines have twined up the apple tree with pumpkins resting on branches or in mid-air.  The runner beans are preferring the support of tomatoes to the trellis, so beans appear to be growing out of the tomato plants.  The cosmos, … Read more

Practicing Deep Magic

Having grown up reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other fantasy books, I’ve been  immersed in the concept of deep magic.  Most everyone knows the stories…the ring to rule them all was forged by deep magic, the stone table on which Aslan was sacrificed was built with deep magic. The magic that created these things always … Read more

Connectedness as Mindfulness Practice

pumpkin flower - connected

“We are all connected; to each other biologically; to the earth chemically; and to the universe atomically.”  That’s from Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author and Director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. His explanation is simple and to the point. It might be easy to miss how profound the idea is. For much of human … Read more

Strategizing for Mindfulness – Four Simple Steps

Creating a Strategy Having a strategy for mindfulness practice is as important as a technique. Many of the participants in the Mindfulness 101 class that I teach at the Colorado Mental Wellness Network already know about meditation and mindfulness.  Many have practiced sporadically. Their challenge is not that they don’t know some basic meditation techniques, … Read more

It’s Not Really a Journey

Spiritual Practice A path, a journey, a long climb to the top of the mountain….all are analogies for spiritual practice. The implication is that we are trying to get somewhere. We start HERE and we get THERE, wherever THERE is. We are moving on a path toward enlightenment, or at the very least a reduction … Read more

The Wellness Recovery Action Plan® (WRAP®)

Wellness Recovery Action Plans  It’s impossible to be on the planet for any length of time and not have health or life challenges of one sort or another. It’s a tough planet.  And that is what makes the Wellness Recovery Action Plan® (WRAP®) a valuable tool for everyone. I completed my  WRAP® Facilitator training just … Read more

For Beverly – Planting Seeds of Joy

    Last year on March 18th, my good friend Beverly passed away. It was shocking and disorienting as Beverly seemed unstoppable to me. Even though she’d been born with a serious physical disability, she didn’t let that slow her down. She used a motorized wheel chair and you really needed to stay out of … Read more

Winter Mandalas

Creating Winter Mandalas  This moment and this moment and this next moment….that’s what we have. These moments make up our lives. And yet we seem to be wired to be anywhere but in this present moment. Certainly more than at any time in our history, the information on meditation and mindfulness is readily available. But … Read more