PRUNING

Wisteria pruning – that’s what’s on my mind! It’s been an unruly mess since all the leaves dropped during the Christmas holidays. But despite it’s beautiful appearance (and fragrance) when it’s flowering, Wisteria has small thorny protuberances that hurt when you’re trying to wrangle it. It’s not our favourite job!

Anyway, the sun shone enough on Sunday to motivate us to go do it, and we started untangling the bushy sticks on the front of our house. It was everywhere, wrapped round the drainpipe, growing through the guttering, weaving it’s way through the surrounding bushes…Chop, chop, chop went the loppers. Up, up, up the ladder went my husband. Snip, snip, snip went the secateurs as I tried to get the mess small enough to go into the bags to take to the compost heap.

It occurred to me, that Wisteria is a lot like the mind. If we don’t take time to prune regularly – cutting out the traumas and bad experiences – it can lead to a tangle of anxiety, projecting fear into the future, over-thinking, faulty beliefs and prickly self-doubt. Our minds create new ways to protect us when we experience trouble, which send out their creepers into all manner of thoughts and behaviours. If we don’t pay attention, they can end up hindering us not helping. Outwardly in the spring sunshine, the Wisteria appears and smells beautiful, but underneath it’s a mess – sound familiar?

The good news is regular mindful meditation helps. Noticing what’s occurring inside, allows you to see underneath the mind-chatter, and visualisation guides you towards new ways of thinking and doing. Havening, EFT, NLP, and many other healing modalities, help you cut out the traumas and bad experiences to reveal more of your authentic self allowing you to bloom more fully.

My Wisteria may not be ‘perfect’, but there’s a whole lot more light getting in now!