Sprout your divine.

Cultivate your thriving ecosystem.

I spent the afternoon transplanting this year’s starts into their big plant containers. Spring is in the air and I couldn’t resist delving into the only use of the word ‘seed’ – bijam in Sanskrit – in the yoga sutras.

Sutra 1.24

The divine is the seed of all knowledge, wisdom, and love.

A seed is the beginning, a birth of new growth, ideas, and energy. According to yoga philosophy, the divine resides in each of us. Therefore, knowledge, wisdom, and love is in each of us waiting to sprout.

As I’ve been watching sprouts come up each day for the last several weeks, I have noticed that some spring to life quickly and with ease, some stagger later, and some seeds don’t germinate at all and must be replanted.

This month is all about how to sprout your divine by cultivating your ideal environment.

Each type of seed needs a different temperature, moisture amount, and depth to stimulate growth. Similarly, each of us has an ideal environment that germinates our own divine seed to begin the growth of knowledge, wisdom, and love from inside. Even more intimate is that our unique sprouting conditions can vary throughout different periods and facets of our life. We may easily open and grow while on a retreat but remain stagnant and dormant while in the routine of life’s responsibilities.

How can we cultivate our thriving ecosystem in our day to day?

The practice becomes learning what environment is right for us at what time, noticing noxious environments, and adjusting our gardening skills accordingly. When is it that we need more heat to grow and when is it that we are over heating ourselves to the point of damage? How do we know if we have enough moisture or if we are drowning? Too much space or not enough? What is it that nurtures our growth?

Cultivating your thriving ecosystem

Activity Levels

Our ideal activity level is one that allows us to shift easily between sitting still and getting going and between mental focused direction and passive observations and receptivity. Temperature is generated by our mental and physical activity. The more we move or think, the more heat we create.

If we can’t amp up or cool down and we are in a constant go go go, or no no no, we may not be in our optimal environment.

Play with mental and physical stimulation levels and notice the resulting range, frequency, and ease of transitions between levels of mental and physical activity to find your perfect temperature.

Diversity

Moisture dictates our fluidity, our ability to change, form, and reform. Each of us thrives with a different amount of variety in our physical and mental patterns. Sometimes we stick too aggressively to our regular routines, lacking moisture, and sometimes we scatter ourselves, flooding ourselves and getting carried away.

We know our variety of movement is ideal for the body when we effortlessly adjust between quick or slow movements, can move easily and equally in all directions, and our joints feel supple in our various activities.

Our mental diversity is balanced when we smoothly adapt to new ideas and our mind feels simultaneously inspired, active, and grounded.

If there is a misbalance here, try new movements, actions, and new daily patterns. A new pattern can be as simple as switching the order you wash your body in the shower or the order we get dressed in. Put on the top part of the outfit first, and then the bottom to spice things up.

If you feel overwhelmed, try scheduling a few components of your life by committing to specific meal or exercise times. Eventually, you’ll find the perfect amount of change to moisturize your life.

Space

Everything needs literal space to grow and expand. Space also allows for the transfer of 0₂and C0₂(even seeds need to breathe) and gives us the ability to let nutrients in and to let go of toxins.

We know that we have the right balance of alone time, community, rest, and unscheduled time when we can effectively process life’s experiences in a healthy manner.

If we have a hard time letting go of a painful experience, constantly try to recreate a good experience, or we can’t receive, we may need to adjust our schedules and how we spend our time. The body may need time alone, physical space out in nature, or human touch and connection. Our minds may need free unstructured time to be creative and integrate or it may need more discipline such as through meditation. Some of us get lost with too much space and some of us get crowded easily. We know that we have the right balance of space when we can take in and let go of life experiences with ease and we thrive.

As we tend to our lives we may feel crowded by responsibilities, flooded, dried out, overheated by activity, or stiff from stagnation. We may notice that our soil needs more water and our life more fluidity. We may be in a mandatory routine because of children, caring for parents, making a living, or simply because we aren’t currently able to find balance. Although we can usually find small actions that cultivate the ideal sprouting conditions, it simply may not be enough to germinate the divine seed within us.

The beauty is that a seed has everything it needs to grow inside and is just waiting for the right environment to thrive.

Seeds can lay dormant for years, but life is still inside waiting to pop out. Some explode after fire, some sprout for seemingly no reason and from no perceptible environmental change, and some appear dormant but have already begun cracking open microscopically and are sprouting imperceptibly.

The divine is inside and is ready and waiting to sprout and grow.

The beauty is that the seed is there.

Eventually the soil will warm, the moisture will drain, and we will thrive!