Tigrilla Gardenia Healing with Nature’s Wisdom

Tigrilla Gardenia

[00:00:00] Tigrilla Gardenia: We’re, we’re so deep into it that we don’t think about it. You know, you, you usually feel like you’re supposed to come on a podcast to talk about like something you’ve produced, and what we end up talking a lot about is who you’ve become and how you experience the world because of that. And how that natural connection, that connection

[00:00:54] Ed Watters: Today, we are speaking with Tigrilla Gardenia. She is the host of [00:01:00] the Reconnect with Plants Wisdom Podcast and the founder of the Naturally Conscious Community. Tigrilla could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please.

[00:01:14] Tigrilla Gardenia: Well, I am so, so happy to be here. So as, as, you said my name beautifully, beautifully, Tigrilla Gardenia. And I am a nature inspired mentor and a certified life coach. But I think what, what most people are curious about is that I am a world ambassador for plant advocacy. I work mainly with, um, multipotentialites, you know, multi-passionate people, and, and neurodivergent people to create an ecosystem, you know, a living ecosystem of life where you can really flourish in your own way, in your own colors. And I do this with the help of the plant kin homes. So working very, very closely with plants as mentors, as models, and as collaborators. It’s about, it’s a mouthful, I know. It takes a minute. [00:02:00]

[00:02:01] Ed Watters: Yeah, I like that a lot. And, no, that’s all good. Uh, you know, like after reading your bio, I came across, you discovered your calling through a life-changing encounter with a musical plant. Could you please explain this to me? It just baffles me. And I’ve never heard of a musical plant.

[00:02:30] Tigrilla Gardenia: Yeah. so I live in a place called Damanhur, it’s one of the largest spiritual communities in the world. It’s kind of this Hogwarts for adults type of situation, although I always say that, for adults, ’cause I think I, I try to qualify it, but we have tons of children here. So I don’t know why I even say it. Um, but in, in here we have, you know, lots of different, um, spiritual technologies and different ways that we interact with the, the living world all around us. And so one day I was walking down [00:03:00] a hallway here and I heard this music and I followed the music.

’cause I, so preface that my original degree was in music engineering and electrical engineering. I’ve done tons of stuff in the music world, and the arts is a big, big part of who I am. You know, that, that whole creative, get out of the mold, sort of side that comes when you allow yourself to just dive into imagination and such. And so this music intrigued me because it was like nothing I had ever heard. So I followed it and I ended up at a box that was connected to a speaker on one side and to a plant on the other, and I was like, Huh? And as I was, you know, kind of trying to figure out what the heck was going on here, I kept hearing this music and I kept looking at the plant going, Is that you?

And it felt like in that moment, all of a sudden the plant was saying, Hi, I’m so glad you can finally see me. Let’s have a conversation. I really wanna talk to you about this and that and you know, it’s been so [00:04:00] many years that you have been ignoring me. And so, and it was like, Oh my goodness, you are an actual living, like not just alive, but like a living being. And that was it, that was enough to kind of open me up. You know, that whole engineering side of myself, how the hell does this box work? And the whole like, you know, part of me that is about music and that really feels connected and can understand people through their musical choices, the music they create, the music they express. Like all these different parts just merge together to give a voice, to a certain extent, to this plant. To allow me, this plant to communicate with me in something that I understood. And yeah, I’ve been kind of hooked ever since. I kind of fell down a rabbit hole since then.

[00:04:49] Ed Watters: Yeah. A lot of, uh, times on my monologues I will tell people, You’ve gotta get in tune with nature. Wherever [00:05:00] you are, there’s nature there. And through consuming some of your content, you talk a lot about this being in tune with nature. You know, grass growing through a crack in a parking lot is nature. And you know, I, I say get close to the grass because that’s where you’re going to find very interesting things. Lay down in the grass and feel it. There’s, there’s this connection that we miss because we’re so busy in our life all the time, we’re running here and there. And my wife and I, we got a chance to purchase some property out in the middle of no place. And we’re hooked now, we’re going on thirteen years in. And you know, we get deer, and birds, and different animals roaming [00:06:00] around our property and it’s just very calming to be in tune with nature. Sometimes it’s very difficult for people to even experience that. How do we relate the feeling that we’re feeling about connecting with nature to someone that’s so uptight and running all the time?

[00:06:27] Tigrilla Gardenia: You, you said it perfectly at the beginning, which is, you know, the, the, first of all, the disconnection, what, what I tend to think of as the original trauma. Like people wanna talk about the original sin, forget the original sin, man, let’s talk about the original trauma. Whatever disconnected us from our natural sense of being, the fact that we are nature. That we have forgotten that we are nature, that we approach the world with, from that perspective. And the fact that we tend to think of nature as you just [00:07:00] described it. You’ve had the benefit of being into that and being, moving into that. But for a lot of people, the idea of going out there is scary as hell. It’s like, Oh my goodness, I have to like, what, what if something’s gonna bite me or eat me? Or you know, if I don’t know how to find food, or if my car breaks down, and I don’t know, some bear is gonna come along and like, I don’t know, people make up all kinds of stuff. Because when you grow up in a city,

you’re almost told that you’re not, that there is no nature. You’re almost, you’re, you’re disconnected from your body, you’re told to separate out from your senses. You’re given like, alarm clocks start at this time, breakfast is at this hour, lunch is at this hour, dinner is at this time, like you no longer have any natural rhythms. You don’t have natural rhythms of light because the light is coming from, you know, some flip the switch type of thing. Like all these different pieces that constantly from birth reinforce your disconnection from this fundamental part of who you are. [00:08:00] And so you can’t just dump ’em into the middle of nowhere because most people will just freak out.

So you gotta go, Okay. Little, little steps at a time. And it’s amazing. If you think now, um, especially after COVID, was the giant kind of houseplant craze. Now the houseplant craze has gone a little too far in the perspective of, oh my God, I’m gonna control, ’cause we’ve extended that control thing. But that’s a really great place to start just the same as the blade of grass that you mentioned is a great place to start. Which is, Okay for a second, I’m gonna stop thinking about this as a thing I have to control. And instead, what happens when I just spend time with you? Like literally, now if you ask anybody who has a house full of plants, they will tell you all the benefits.

You know, they won’t talk about how much time they spend watering or whatever. They’ll just say, Oh, I love being in the room with my cup of coffee. It feels so good. Like they already know it, but they just haven’t intellectualized it yet. Which is kind of a good thing to a certain extent. [00:09:00] But then you have to, just take that a little step further, which is sit there. Now move that into a conscious thing like, Hello Aloe, or Hello, you know, succulent that I found at Ikea for two dollars, probably almost dead. Like, let me just sit with you here for a second. And I am just gonna sit in, you know, to a certain extent, silence and just whatever, let me know whatever you wanna let me know, type of thing. And just start to open that. And start to then also see that in your city, in the littlest things,

it doesn’t have to be big, like, like you said, the blade of grass coming out of the crack. The, the abandoned parking lot where, you know, plantains and dandelions have taken over the corner or that crack pipe where there’s like some mossy, licheny thing that’s growing out of it that you don’t know how to name and you don’t know how to identify, or the street trees. I mean, come on, almost all cities have street trees somewhere. [00:10:00] Just stopping for a second and like being there can be incredibly rewarding, like our nervous system. And when immersed in nature, like our cortisol levels drop by like fifty percent in twenty minutes. We have, uh, sensations, of people who live near abandoned, uh, parking lots that have now been taken over by like wild grasses and stuff start to experience lower levels of depression. Like it’s not, doesn’t take that much. Don’t, don’t try to say, Oh, but I don’t have time for a hike or to blah, blah, blah. No, just five minutes sitting in your house with your cup of coffee or your tea and just looking at the plant and saying, I see you. I’m here. That’s enough. That’s enough to start the process.

[00:10:58] Ed Watters: Yeah. It really can [00:11:00] be a cleansing, you know? No, no matter where you are, there’s a possibility of finding something new. And you know, it’s interesting. We often think about ants and things that are noticeable, but when you get deeper into it, you find things, it’s an ecosystem. And it all works together. And we, we tend to miss out if we don’t tune ourselves in. You said you’re into music earlier and, you know, I feel that life is a resonance itself and we can alter our frequency levels just by being emotionally and physically in tune with what we are around. And if, if we’re aware of [00:12:00] that, we can actually physically change what we are by removing ourself or immersing ourselves even deeper into the experience. And it all starts with that tuning in to the frequency that you’re desiring. What’s your thoughts on that?

[00:12:27] Tigrilla Gardenia: Yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more. So I often try to explain that we think of language, for example, or of other things as a music, as, um, uh, like we think of music as a language, but it’s actually the opposite. Which is very close to what you said, which is, you know, it is, music is the origin, it is that, like you said, resonance, uh, frequency. So in reality, everything is a musicality because all resonance is vibration and all vibration is music. And so everything has that [00:13:00] musicality running through, which is why the music of the plants, for example, this device that in the end, my community has been working on since the 1970s and is now, is publicly available.

That’s the reason why the music of the plants is so powerful because it gives, it’s a musical instrument for plants that allows the plants to, um, use a sense that we haven’t shut down, which is a sense of hearing. Because other senses that are still vibration, that are still resonance, as you were just mentioning, we’ve shut down. So we don’t, we don’t feel the earth’s vibration as we could, the geomagnetic. We don’t sense, you know, the electrical impulses that are coming through our environment, we don’t sense any of those consciously. I still believe that they’re dormant to a certain extent and that we’re, they’re there and I actually teach about, you know, how to reawaken these lost senses.

But the point being is like everything vibrates, everything resonates, and we can tune into it. We’re, we’re [00:14:00] just this giant antenna that we can develop and slowly attenuate that antenna until we lock into what, what is good for us and what is moving us in the direction that we wanna do. And this is a big part of what starts to come online when you reconnect with the natural world. When you give yourself that, that moment, like I was saying, of I’m not even gonna do anything, like I could give you other exercises, which I have kind of on my Insight timer or in my Naturally Conscious Community that you can try. But let’s just even try the basics. If I sit there and I consciously open myself and say to the plant, I’m here, then some part of my senses is going to start to feel

what that plant is resonating and what that plant is sending to me. And so that starts a chain of events that allows me to continuously, in a safe way, open my senses. [00:15:00] Because I think we’re, um, so disconnected and life is so loud in non harmonious ways that we think that opening our senses is gonna make it worse. When in reality, as you said, when you open your senses like a sensor, like a being of nature, the attenuation part becomes natural as well. And so you’re much better at tuning in. If you think about it from the perspective of just straight up biology, plants are sessile, right? Rooted into the ground, cannot run away from their problems like we do.

So what happens? They have to be hypervigilant, they have to know everything, they can’t just close their eyes or, you know, their photoreceptors and say, I don’t wanna see what’s coming from this direction. Or, I don’t wanna sense that thing, or, No, no, no, don’t tell me. Because that’s death, right? They have to be the opposite, which is, I’m gonna open everything, I’m gonna know, I’m gonna use all my twenty senses, and I’m [00:16:00] constantly going to be filtering this. And then to not get overwhelmed, I choose which ones to focus in on. So we evolved from plants, right? We are an evolution that comes later in the chain. That means that those capabilities that also you see in, you know, the fungi world, that you see in bacteria, that you see also even in animals, right?

This ability for them to use hyper senses that are, senses that are hyper, uh, sensitive to certain things that we have lost. But we’re animals too, which means, how is it that we’re the last on the food chain with the most reduced amount of things? It’s because our culture has reduced them, not because our biology reduces them. And so once you start to walk into that experience and you start to open again and say, Oh. Truly being able to choose means seeing everything, and experiencing everything, and then from there, making an informed choice. Which of course, I start to [00:17:00] become better at doing it a little bit more automatically,

it’s not like I’m constantly thinking about it. But the point is that it’s just, it is a natural part of who we are. If we didn’t, you know, abdicate our responsibilities, if we didn’t give away our power to societies and cultures and norms and values and all these different things, but instead, we absorbed all that in and then made the choices that were best for our bodies, for our, our way of living, for the things that we want to accomplish for the environment in which we’re in, and that’s that living ecosystem I’m talking about. You know, when I do coaching with people, it’s never about, like let’s, that’s the reason I say it’s life coaching, I never look at just like this one problem in a vacuum because that reductionist thinking doesn’t work. It’s more of, let’s look at everything around you,

let’s open up to all the weird ways your mind works. ‘Cause I love that, like whatever you think is odd. Like I process this because I hear the [00:18:00] sound, I go over here and I start to paint, and I go over here and I’m really good at numbers, and over here, instead, I jump up and down because my body feels, and blah, blah, blah. Throw it all into the pot, man. Let’s look at it all and then let’s see which of those sensors is attuned to which signaler. And so boom, boom. And then we start to like weave these through so that you start to master the way that you truly are.

[00:18:28] Ed Watters: Yeah. You know, I go back to my younger days when my mother, she was a plant freak, and we would always see her humming, and, you know, watering her plants, and talking to the plants. And we never could figure out, well, why does her plants grow so well? And it’s that connection [00:19:00] that she had with the plants. And another thing I, I’m really interested about is grounding. You know, we’re often times not willing to take our shoes and socks off and connect with the earth and be part of nature in its true form. That’s because usually we’re isolated because of the soles of our shoes and we, we don’t understand that connection can bring a completeness and it makes you feel good inside and about yourself when you actually experience it. A lot of people can connect because they go to the beach and that’s when they’ll take their shoes off and they’ll run in the warm sand, and that really brings them that joy [00:20:00] feeling. You’re connected, you’re, you know, grounding to the earth. What’s your thoughts on grounding?

[00:20:08] Tigrilla Gardenia: It’s funny that you say this ’cause, um, as, as I’ve been talking to more and more and more people, I’m realizing that as I hear the things that each one of them shares, it, it, it connects me to elements, and times, and moments, and things that I’ve changed in my life. Again, naturally, organically, let’s say it that way, where it’s just naturally happened. Now I was a, I love the concept, I love the concept of shoes. Like in the sense that when I was, I did some acting for, for several years, and when I was an actor, I always found my character through shoes. Like it was, like once I put the shoes on, I could feel it. But it’s really funny, I spend the, now, the majority of my life,

either if it’s warm, which I live in a climate that, um, I live in a place which, it’s Northern Italy, we do have a period of summer, in the summer, I will be basically with flip flops because as soon as I sit somewhere, I [00:21:00] take my shoes off. Like, it’s like always, always, always. And then for the rest of the year where I have to wear shoes, I’ve basically switched all my shoes to barefoot shoes. To like, really, really thin soled barefoot shoes. Even my hiking boots, and that was a humongous shift in the way that I experience the deep, immersive, natural environment, because I would wear, you know, hiking boots. I’m, I’m not from a place I have to, just so people know, I was a city girl. When I tell my mother about some of the things that I do now, she’s like, she just looks at me and she’s like, I don’t understand,

we’re city people. I’m like, Look, we’re from an island. And, but she’s like, Yeah, but I’m from the city of an island. And I was just like, All right. Whatever. But I get it. Like, you know, we are city folks. So don’t, don’t pretend, I’m not like some, you know, I didn’t grow up running through barefoot, you know? But I have, but I completely agree with you. I’ve always had this streak of me that likes to be, as a matter of fact, I’m barefoot right now. And, [00:22:00] um, and I have marble floors, which I adore, uh, for lots of different reasons. But, um, but my, when I switched to my hiking boots, I would, um, felt very unstable when I would hike wearing, you know, normal hiking boots. And I just thought it was me,

I just thought I wasn’t used to it, I didn’t really understand, I just, you know, I had, I, I’m kind of new to it. I live in the middle of, I live at the foothills of the Alps, so there’s lots of mountains around here. And I have a really good friend of mine who’s a Woods Guide and I absolutely adore going on his hikes because it feels very safe. ‘Cause I’m kind of like still, when it comes to that kind of immersive environment, um, I’m more of a meadow girl. I like, I have a beautiful meadow in front of my house, there’s gorgeous cows who have been having way too much sex in the last few days, and then a, a river that’s flowing down. And so it’s, it’s wonderful.

But I do, I do love, like, learning and getting comfortable with the mountain. I thought it was just me. And then I bought a pair of barefoot hiking boots. [00:23:00] Oh my gosh, It changes everything. My feet feel the shape of the rocks, and of the stones, and of the little gravel, and whatever it is that I’m walking on. I feel it through my feet. And while yes, there is still a sole because you know, it has a little bit of a sole, but you’re, you’re absolutely right, that connection is so much more. And so I have a pair of like, you know, barefoot ballerinas that I pretty much wear most of the year. My flip flops, which I try to buy the ones that are as flat and as like soleless as possible.

Uh, I’ll slowly be adding more from, there’s this one company in, uh, Portland that I adore. Soft Star Shoes, Soft Star Shoes, which I absolutely adore. So whenever I’m in the US I like try to get a pair, that’s where my, um, hiking boots are from. And, and, and I just really feel that difference where it’s like, okay, if I have to wear shoes, [00:24:00] I prefer to wear these that really let me feel the contours of the earth. That really allow me, and oftentimes I can easily slip out of them because if I’m just about anywhere where I can, I will slip out of my shoes immediately. So I am, I am in a complete agreement with you, which is that connection to,

it’s our stability, right? Like we as human beings stabilized by putting our two feet flat on the ground and our entire body dynamics are built, are predicated on how well I stand. And I think that that’s another one of those preconditioned elements, which is when I switched to barefoot shoes or, and, and even when I started to just embrace the idea that, okay, during the summer I’m just gonna wear like really flat flip flops, very, and I stopped. Um, I try very hard to buy almost, even when I buy, like, I don’t know, I don’t really use tennis shoes, [00:25:00] I have a few pairs of Chuck Tees, right? Converse Chuck Tees, because they’re flat inside. And I wanted to feel again what my feet are supposed to be shaped like in order to prevent back injury and pain.

So as I would feel things in my body, because again, that connection that naturally goes, I’d start to play with, okay, is it, is it the way that I’m shaping, you know, my back? Is it, am I supposed to tuck in? Am I supposed to tuck out? And where are my feet standing? And you can’t do that if you’re wearing shoes with like a massive arch, and with all these, like we don’t even realize that all these pains and aches and things that we have are coming from our inability to explore the most basic parts of our body’s anatomy. Which is posture, right? And I’m not by no means an expert on anybody else. I can just tell you that I have spent

probably the last few [00:26:00] years because I had a back injury that happened a few years ago, and after that I was like, Okay, I don’t wanna have to deal with this anymore. And so I’m gonna literally explore barefoot shoes so that my body, wide stance, so my toes are now wider out. Because that’s the way our feet were meant to be, wider, not narrow. And then where, how am I supposed to stand? Do I lean a little forward? Do I lean a little back? Does my butt come out? Did my butt come in? Is it my stomach muscles? Is it my back muscles? Like, and that connection, which also is thanks to this little plant that’s sitting over my shoulder, uh, you know, named Dracaena as I, as I lovingly call Key because it doesn’t wanna give me a name. Because it’s all about embodiment of, of that, that physical body. So yeah, we’re, we’re completely in agreement with that, which is that grounding is, go even beyond just connection. It’s connection to self [00:27:00] and, and it’s connection to self through everything that Mother Earth gives us, you know, everything that the earth provides for us in that method.

[00:27:10] Ed Watters: Uh, I’ll, I’ll tell you, it, it’s interesting. You know, if you do immerse yourself into nature and get in tune with not only it, but what it needs. Because all of my plants that we’ve planted around here, we have berry bushes, we have grapes, we have plum trees, uh, you know, uh, all of these bushes, and trees, and fruits, and things that we plant, we have to maintain and water. And it’s like a renewing every year because you have to cut out the old and then the new [00:28:00] flourishes.

And I have this little analogy that I use, Life is like a muddy shoe. We are the muddy shoe and life is the muddy trail and the people, places, and things are the mud on the trail. If you’ve ever walked in boots, you know how heavy mud can get. It’s clay, it sticks, it gets heavy, you have to wipe that mud off. Those people, places, and things. And then you’ve got the really thin liquidy mud, the good mud that just soaks into your threads and it’s not leaving you. So you really have to think about what you’re hauling around. And do you need to wipe the mud off? [00:29:00] Living in a place like you live and the style of life that you live, what, what balance techniques do you use to create that harmonious balance in your life?

[00:29:20] Tigrilla Gardenia: Ooh, my podcast is eclectic. I had, uh, I just did an interview this morning with someone who I wasn’t really sure what direction we would take, and it was so, I was, like crying in a good way. I was so emotional of the things that we were talking about. He was, we, we, I ended up calling it, uh, um, Path to, Path of a Mystic, of a Modern Mystic because he’s somebody who spent nine months in silence. And we were talking about that deep connection to the mystery. Yeah, nine months in silence. Can you imagine that? And he was, you know, somebody who has really explored that deep connection of mysticism, which is my [00:30:00] inner presence in the presence of the natural world, right? Where I, I am in nature as nature and I sit in that presence and silence. And he did it through silence,

silence. I do it through movement, going back to the whole music thing. I get there, I get to that equivalent silence through, through movement, through the way that my body moves. Um, so I have people like him. Um, I, I have a, a person who wrote a science fiction, um, type book around, a series of books for teens connected to really helping people understand the natural world and connect into the natural world through fantasy. Um, I’ve had all kinds of different, uh, authors, and artists, and people. One person who’s more of an [00:31:00] esoteric person who was talking about her work with plants to, um, embody, again, consciousness. And so my podcast really has a wide range of people that are all working very closely with and co-creating with,

one of the things I do when I do my pre-interviews is, I, I always give them the same little spiel and I always say, Please do not get insulted, but I am not looking, there’s lots of really great podcasts out there that talk about working, um, using plants, I don’t, I’m not one of them. Like my podcast is about the width, the, the co-creation, the, the partnership, the, the deep lessons that come from that immersion, like you were mentioning, you know, thirteen years, you’re living in this environment and it changes you because you now don’t feel that separation. You don’t feel like Nature is this thing [00:32:00] outside of me, it’s me. And I sometimes am in it, I sometimes am it, I sometimes participate in it, I sometimes observe. But it’s still all different facets of me, and that’s what I love to explore.

[00:32:17] Ed Watters: Yeah, I like that a lot. You, you know, so much of life is a challenge and when we learn to pause, it, it is a life changing game. You know, my, my wife now is learning to do that and I’ve witnessed a change in her over the last few months that, uh, I never thought I’d see. It’s remarkable. And just learning to pause, think about what you’re thinking, and then react. That pause is very important, I like it. So where, go ahead. [00:33:00]

[00:33:01] Tigrilla Gardenia: It’s a really interesting question because as I was, I was, as I was thinking about, you know, the guest of my podcast and, and as you were talking about, you know, your own experiences, I was realizing that one of the most beautiful things that I love to capture is how, because, because most of us don’t really, we’re, we’re so deep into it that we don’t think about it. You know, you, you usually feel like you’re supposed to come on a podcast to talk about like something you’ve produced. And what we end up talking a lot about is who you’ve become and how you experience the world because of that.

And how that natural connection, that connection back to my true nature has allowed me, or, without even realizing it, a lot of, like if I go back and I look at my, I don’t know, my journals from twenty years ago or even, even just fifteen years ago when I arrived at Damanhur, and I go and I look at my journals and I see [00:34:00] all the things I was quote unquote working on about me, my personal development, so many of those that I tried so hard with so many techniques, with so many classes, with so many things, are, are so beautiful today. And yeah, I mean, I am a person who kept it there, kept it present. But I, it, it, it’s, it is what the natural world kind of soaks into you. Like you said, that, that liquidy mud that gets into all of your tissues, and all of the threads, and all of the parts of who you are. That then

it’s like no matter how different each thread is or each piece of clothing, there’s a commonality that comes into it and a, and a uniform part of it that just is there. And, and that’s been what the natural world has done for me. And it’s what I hear in the guests as well as even a lot of, believe it or not, a lot of the [00:35:00] podcasts that I’ve been on, like where I’ve been interviewed, I discover as we’re talking, this exact thing. Like what we’re talking about right now, right? Like, like, oh my goodness, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re so much more than our kind of mental chatter is. If we were just to recognize how fricking amazing we are. So thinking about it from that perspective, I realized that my kind of, a lot of my techniques are, I mean, I use, I use a lot of different things, but so much of it is just stopping, and

recognizing, and resting. Like I would say that probably my biggest, one of the biggest lessons that I have learned for myself or that I’ve embodied, I don’t even think about it as learned anymore because that implies just thinking about it, but more of like what I’ve embodied is, and I, and I just tested this maybe about ten days ago without realizing it was the ability to trust [00:36:00] in myself so much that I could just stop. And so I had this like looming deadline I was working on, I had been asked to do something at the very last moment and if you were to look at the amount of stuff on my plate, you would think that I would wake up like every morning at four o’clock in the morning and go to bed every day at three o’clock,

at three o’clock in the morning, you know? It’s like kind of crazy for the amount of output. But in the other, on the other side, I spend a lot of time sitting like where I am right now, staring out at Gary, the silver fern, which is this beautiful, you know, whatever, I don’t even know how tall, I’ve tried, I should try to figure that out, I think he’s like sixty, seventy feet tall plant that’s like, tree that’s outside of my window. And all these plants here, and I spend a lot of time just staring and being. And when I had a looming deadline and my head just, my, like, mind, brain, mind could not figure things out, I was like, Screw it. I’m just gonna sit back and [00:37:00] I’m gonna rest.

Because that’s what Noelle, the Christmas cactus told me to do. And, um, very insistently. And was like, you just need to rest, just rest. And don’t, and I was like, No, but I have to get this done by tomorrow, like, by tomorrow morning. It’s like, I don’t have time to rest. It was like, just rest, you’ll see. And I woke up on like Monday morning and in three hours the whole thing was done because I listened to the cycles of my body. And the time that I was trying to create it, was not a cycle that worked for me. And so I would say that my kind of quote unquote kind of balance or, or reconnection type piece is literally stop. Just stop.

[00:37:43] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah, so that, that is a good thing to do. Pause, reflect, you know, feel, I, I like that. And then we can actually, and it happens like that usually. When, when [00:38:00] we’re in that reactive state, we wanna jump. And learning to do that takes a long time for a lot of people, but it’s possible. And when we do learn to just release that energy, because that’s really what that is, that emotion is an energy, and if we can learn to control the energy and put the energy where it should be put, instead of just letting it go everywhere, there’s a more productive, uh, feeling that we receive after we learn that technique to put the energy where it needs to go. Yes, you’re mad and I, I understand that you’re mad, but why are you mad? And can we do anything to prevent you from getting there anymore? That’s where [00:39:00] we need to focus, that negative thought and put it into a positive thought. And that’s what we here at the Dead America Podcast really try to relate to people. It’s okay to be you, you’ve got to be who you are. And then when you tune into that natural state, you can become whatever you want to be, not what external forces want you to be for them. What’s your thoughts?

[00:39:34] Tigrilla Gardenia: And I would add one other, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna add one little piece before we, we jump to the end. Which is, you said it beautifully, it’s like pause and think. But in between there I would add feel, because that disconnect. So much of the answer is already inside of your body, so much of the answer is already there. And you’re trying to bubble it up so that you could process it and put it into some [00:40:00] form, like your mind needs to think about it in the sense of how do I get it out of me to give it to somebody else? But the actual answer is already in there in, it’s come in through something you smelled, connected with something that like some little hormone that moved around here, and with something that you saw seven years ago and some memory that got lodged in your, it’s all in there. And it’s just a matter of letting your body bubble it from, you know, all your other kind of brain-like mind pieces and to the brain that then processes it and says, Oh, output, type of thing.

[00:40:43] Ed Watters: Tigrilla, I could speak with you for hours on this subject. Because, you know, when you get truly into a conversation, it, it just flies by. Uh, do you wanna add anything else to our [00:41:00] conversation today before we wrap up?

[00:41:03] Tigrilla Gardenia: Yeah, I would. I would add one piece, which is, um, so much, we know that in the natural world, we evolve faster together. Like mutualisms and mutually beneficial partnerships are the ones that, that evolve the fastest. All the other types, whether you’re talking about predation, or parasitism, or competition, or all these other things, are kind of temporary. They last for small periods of time because they can be really useful. Um, nothing is, is bad, it’s, just has to find its use. And so my kind of piece to everybody is, you know, go and find the support you need to reconnect back into yourself. I know it might seem like, sure, they talk about the mystic, that sort of, if you can do nine, nine months of silence, then sure you can do it alone maybe. But even in those nine nights of, nine months of silence that I was talking to this mystic this morning, you [00:42:00] know, he, when he came out, he went to the indigenous world. Like he, he has spent most of his life now living amongst indigenous peoples, which is all about community and it’s all about, you know, those, those relationships that can sometimes be really frustrating.

‘Cause I live in a community. Trust me, when you’re that close to people, it can be hard. But it’s so rewarding to help us understand. So find support, you know, find a community. You know, don’t be afraid to say, I need help with this, or, I need to be held. Maybe I just need to be held while I explore this and allow somebody else to come and hold you. Whether that’s, you know, a partner, or a friend, or, uh, somebody who is a professional who can hold you in that space. But just, you don’t have to go at it alone.

[00:42:51] Ed Watters: I like what you’ve said. It’s been a very interesting conversation and it, it is remarkable how [00:43:00] you just let the conversation go. Could you let people know how to reach out to you, get ahold of you and find your work?

[00:43:10] Tigrilla Gardenia: Yeah, luckily I’m pretty easy ’cause everything is based off my name. So, uh, my website is tigrillagardenia.com and my Facebook, my LinkedIn, my Instagram, my YouTube, it’s all @tigrillagardenia. And then, so those are the easiest ways. And if you’re looking for me, you can find from there how to like, you know, book on a call and we can talk, or you can join the Naturally Conscious Community, which is my online, like online community for deep human plant interactions.

[00:43:42] Ed Watters: It’s been a joy discussing these things with you today. Thank you for sharing with us, Tigrilla.

[00:43:48] Tigrilla Gardenia: Thank you so much, this has been absolutely wonderful.

[00:43:55] Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, [00:44:00] entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.