Sign up for our Newsletter & receive Sanctuary SELF Care Packages blooming with design inspirations & motivations.

Research & Benefits

Are you ready to embrace the transformative power of nature? Then listen IN…

Hello Red Bird, here’s a Valentine for you!

You might be busy making everyone in the landscape of your life feel and know that they are loved, special, adored. I know that’s part of your natural healing nature. It’s so beautiful and seen.

And part of my natural healing nature is to share something when it comes along that I know will nurture you. That’s why I’m writing – to share a podcast from my heart on this valentine’s.

I had the pleasure to sit down for an interview with the podcast phenom Jennifer Jewell of Cultivating Place: Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden to talk about Healing Gardens, Sanctuary and connecting dots between the sacred within and precious nature out.

The timing is not lost on me… the winter season, the cycle of life, and all. of. it.

This is a garden-heart deep conversation about the transformative power of the garden, plants, and nature to offer us healing and wellbeing – starting in our own gardens, hearts, and minds.

The outcome is an intimate conversation, arriving at the most perfect time. Please enjoy the podcast, the Healing Garden series Jennifer is hosting as a way to cultivate precious medicine for your soul and space.

SEEING aka understanding and helping people make space for their true nature so that it radiates as peace, beauty, balance and harmony – this is the work of the sanctuary. My work, my Valentine and what Native peoples call the Beauty Way.

Sacred space making, our healing gardens – they all start with our tending to the garden within, caring for ourselves, BEing ours as we are to others, listening and seeing our native, true nature responsibly. As keepers of much of all of it, recovering overdoers, we strike down a new garden path – one that allows us to radiantly ripple out love because we are Being our own Sanctuary, first.

Take a listen and let me know what you feel… and think after listening. Oh, and how about you SHARE the podcast kinda like a Valentine?

(For part 2 of a 3-part series skip on over here. Would you like the cliff notes version? Click Here Your 3 Cures Tip Sheet!)
3

I know two things to be true:

  • We are hard-wired to sync with the seasons and to revel in nature’s nourishment.
  • We are hard workers, taking care of things & people in our lives so that they stay in sync.

Sometimes the twain just don’t meet.

Access to nature “green stuff” on the daily is critical to healthy psychological and physiological functioning, supporting our immune systems. Downstream, the lack of restorative break time can impact our productivity and consequently, the other “green stuff” – the money, honey.

Here’s what I else I know to be true:

  • You are (likely) a solo-working-from-home, busting your b$%t, Chief Executive Of-it-all.
  • You take care of a business that takes care of others, directly or indirectly.
  • Taking good care of yourself slips further down the famed to-do list then you’d like to admit.

If break time is a mere, laughable fantasy in your daily operations flow, I’ve got: 

3 Cures for Greening Your Workplace Blues, Naturally & Right from Your Desk

Cumulative effects of a shortage of serene green scenes can creep up on us, showing up as decreased satisfaction and productivity, cranky-pants and generally, just feeling blah. Our environment impacts us. Don’t fight it. This is just who we are. We’re sensitive beings. I mean, really, it takes a highly sensitive person to be highly successful running her/his own biz. Inside our busy, hustling, buried-business wo/men minds we may feel, blue.

Green “nature deficit” around us can cause our mind-body-spirit bottom line to be blue.

Cure 1: Lighten up!

344 smaller rez_3 Cures for Greening Your Workplace Blues

Assess your situation right now. You work from home. You have some sort of desk. You spend how many minutes of your precious life at the helm, in that chair? Lift your head up, look around. No, really, please look around. Is there any bit of natural light shining in on you?

If you’re not seeing the (natural) light of day peeking into your #creationstation, you may need #greenviewstohelpyou.

This Cure Boosts Your Mental Focus & Positivity Bottom Line

Rx: Expose yourself to (more) natural light.

  • Like a moth to a flame, move your desk to a window so that, at least peripherally, your brain soaks up natural light, subconsciously “greening out” while you work.  Don’t forget to open the blinds, doll.
  • Switch it up on occasion and work remotely from an #oasisoffice. Source a respite office location that has green-infused views and pack n’ go. Outside, garden seating would pay off in bonus #positivityperk benefits! 

Science says:

A study in neuroscience and chronobiology (study of circadian rhythms) showed that a windowless workplace devoid of nature messes with successes. Working in this sort of environ, can throw off circadian rhythms and increase susceptibility to SAD (seasonal affective disorder). 

We need not have a single SAD Superwo/man.

Bank Yourself Some Style Points:

This is your motivation to freshen up your workspace and gain a new perspective – because your business needs you to #takegoodcare of you.  Fact: I rearrange my office with every season (at quarter start) to capture different views and sun patterns; to freshen the overall look of my #creationstation (’cause how much time do we spend in these home office spaces???); and most importantly, to be deliberate in making space for my/my business’ greatness.

Perhaps relocating your command station (aka desk) near a “port hole” to the outside world might have a ripple effect to inspire you to paint a wall, jazz up the window coverings, or simply hang a bird feeder within view.

Cultivate a proper CEO’s healing haven outside for your viewing & restoring pleasure. After all, why wouldn’t you have the best view in the (home) office, Ms. CEO?

Ready for Cure #2? Skip along over to here.


Did you find this Cure helpful and actionable in making space beautiful and happy for you? There are more Cures where that came from…

Get your 1-page Tip Sheet of my 3 Cures for Greening Your Workplace Blues to Boost Your Mind-Body-Soul Bottom Line.

Click for 3 Cures Tip Sheet!

And I’ll make that click a 2-fer by also adding you to Red Bird’s email list where I share other great content like resources, announcements, and more with those only on my list. Fret not, if at any point you want to remove yourself, there’s a 1 click unsubscribe button at the bottom of every single email.


DSC_9163 - cutoutWelcome! I’m Annie Red Bird, Empowering Nature Translator, Serenity Stylista & Sanctuary Garden Designer. I dig deep, crusading about nature’s beauty & benefit to illuminate our truest, best selves, because the spaces we keep have a profound impact on our wellbeing & soul-fulfilling greatness.
Are you a style-keen, nature-loving, holistically-inclined “soilsoulsister” (or brother) who wants to tune out stress & dis-ease & tune into your mind.body.spirit connection, thanks to your own slice of everyday, personal paradise? Plant-tas-tic! Sign up for news, resources, good shares and we’ll get on with thriving outside & healing inside.

An original post via The Dirt


Landscape attributes, photo credit MaryCarol Hunter
Landscape attributes / MaryCarol Hunter

“We know that exposure to nature enhances our well-being, but we know less about the specific features that create these positive effects,” said MaryCarol Hunter, ASLA, University of Michigan, at the ASLA 2015 Annual Meeting in Chicago. A set of fascinating studies by Hunter and Marc Berman, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, are beginning to converge on what those feature are. The goal is to translate knowledge of these features into design guidelines landscape architects and other designers can apply. All of this research is happening under the rubric of the TKF Foundation, which has invested millions over the past two decades creating more than 130 small, healing parks and financing research studies on the health benefits of green spaces in dense, urban areas. The TKF Foundation wants to know: with increasingly limited space in cities for green space…

View original post 1,084 more words