Reflections on 21 days of yoga, gardening, growing and gathering
I’ve absolutely loved HARVEST.
I knew I would enjoy it. October is such a wonderful time of year here in Connemara, and I love the extraordinary abundance of food that comes out of our garden. But I don’t think I anticipated quite how much this journey would give me to think about.
Over these 21 days, I’ve been gathering apples, grapes, tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, beetroot, honey and beeswax. I’ve been clearing beds, cutting back plants, preparing food for winter and noticing the changing season.
And alongside all of that, I’ve been looking at the harvest of my own life.
What have I cultivated? What have I given my time and energy to? What has grown because I’ve tended it? And what am I continuing to cultivate without really thinking about where it’s taking me?
There have been some lovely discoveries.
1. We are always cultivating something
One of the things that really struck me is that we don’t get to opt out of cultivating.
Every day, through our actions, our habits, our choices and our relationships, we’re growing something.
Some of it is very intentional. We practice yoga because we want to feel well. We tend friendships because we value connection. We look after our gardens because we want things to grow.
But some of what we cultivate happens almost without our noticing.
I was thinking about this while looking at my daily habits.
If I take something I do every day and imagine its impact multiplied over months or years, where does it lead me?
Is it taking me somewhere I actually want to go?
I love this question because it brings the future right back into the present moment.
The harvest isn’t something that suddenly happens at the end. It’s being shaped by what we’re doing today.
2. Sometimes we don’t recognise what we’ve grown
During HARVEST, I met someone in person who has been joining my morning yoga classes since August 2020.
We’d never actually met face to face, and yet it felt as though we’d known each other for years.
And, of course, in a way we have.
Morning after morning, through all the ordinary days and changing seasons, we’ve been sharing something.
A little movement. A little conversation. A moment of connection.
And somewhere in all that repetition, a relationship has grown.
I think this has been one of the most beautiful harvests of my morning yoga practice.
I began teaching online, and over six years later, there’s this extraordinary community of people who have become part of my everyday life.
I didn’t set out to cultivate that particular harvest.
But I’m so grateful for it.
And I wonder how many other things in our lives have grown quietly, without us recognising just how valuable they’ve become.
3. Not everything needs to keep growing
This was a big one for me.
I was out in the greenhouse cutting back the tomato plants. There was all this beautiful green growth, but at this stage of the season it was taking energy away from the fruit that still needed to ripen.
And I thought about how often I do exactly the same thing in my own life.
I say yes to things because they’re interesting, worthwhile, exciting or because I know I can contribute something.
But even good things take energy.
And sometimes the sheer quantity of good things means that the things I really value don’t get the attention they deserve.
I’ve been thinking a lot about pruning.
About boundaries.
About saying yes when I really mean yes, and recognising when something is a no.
And about ending things.
I’m very good at beginning things. I love starting projects, exploring ideas and making things happen.
But recognising that something has completed its cycle is another skill entirely.
I was pulling Montbretia from the garden, thinking about how beautiful it is in spring, how wonderful the flowers are, and how now its growing cycle is finished.
And even that has another purpose. The old plant material becomes bedding for the ducks.
There’s something lovely about that.
An ending doesn’t necessarily mean a loss.
Sometimes it simply means that the energy and resources are becoming available for something else.
4. The quality of my experience matters more than how much I get done
This one arrived while I was processing beeswax.
I’d been moving enormous pots and buckets around, steaming the old honeycomb and collecting the wax.
And I had one of those moments when something I already know suddenly lands in a much deeper way.
It’s not how much I get done.
It’s how I feel while I’m doing it.
I can have an incredibly productive day, accomplish loads of things, and arrive at the end feeling as though I’ve been driving a rally car!
And I can have another day where I move steadily, feel connected, enjoy what I’m doing and arrive at the end feeling well.
The external achievements might look very similar.
But my internal experience is completely different.
And that matters enormously.
I’m becoming increasingly interested in the quality of my nervous system throughout the day.
Not just when I’m practicing yoga.
When I’m gardening, answering emails, working, cooking, driving, or doing any of the thousand little things that make up a day.
Am I present?
Am I steady?
Am I enjoying my life while I’m living it?
I think this might be one of the most valuable things I’ve harvested this October.
5. Being more present doesn’t necessarily mean feeling more peaceful
This was an interesting discovery.
We often talk about becoming more present, more connected and more embodied as though the natural result will be greater calm.
And sometimes it is.
But I’ve been noticing something else.
The more deeply I connect with myself and the world around me, the more I feel.
More sensation. More texture. More intensity. More awareness of what’s happening.
And not all of that is necessarily comfortable.
During one of our Sunday practices, we were exploring very slow movements and noticing all the tiny wobbles and adjustments that happen within the body.
And I found myself thinking that perhaps the harvest of practice isn’t always tranquility.
Perhaps it’s capacity.
The capacity to feel more, to stay in relationship with ourselves, to meet a wider range of experiences without immediately needing to change them.
I really like that.
It’s a much richer understanding of what wellbeing can mean.
6. My body has been quietly learning
I’ve loved the movements we’ve explored throughout HARVEST.
So many of them have come directly from the garden.
Reaching up to pick apples. Pulling a branch down to gather pears. Lifting, twisting, carrying, balancing and moving in all those ordinary ways that life asks us to move.
And I’ve been noticing the changes in my own body.
I’ve been using weights in my yoga practice, and I’m genuinely surprised by how much stronger I feel.
Not because I’ve been pushing myself to extremes.
Not because I’ve been following some enormous fitness programme.
Just through consistent movement, appropriate challenge and paying attention.
There’s something very satisfying about recognising that the strength and mobility we cultivate on our mats become part of how we live.
And sometimes the changes are so gradual that we don’t even notice them happening.
Until one day something is easier.
We can reach a little further, balance a little longer, or move with greater confidence.
That’s a harvest worth celebrating.
7. There’s a difference between responsibility and blame
One morning I found myself thinking about extreme ownership.
About taking responsibility for my own inner landscape.
Not in the sense that everything that happens to me is my fault. Absolutely not.
But recognising that I have choices in how I respond, the boundaries I set, the patterns I continue and what I learn from my experiences.
I love the idea of forgive and learn, rather than simply forgive and forget.
Because recognising a pattern is one thing.
Changing it is another!
Sometimes we keep walking down the same road and falling into the same hole.
And perhaps part of our harvest is recognising that we can eventually choose another route.
That we can take what we’ve learned and use it to create something different.
8. There’s something wonderful about living in rhythm with the seasons
I gathered the very last apples from the trees, and the following morning we had our first big frost.
I was absolutely delighted!
There was something so satisfying about having gathered everything just as the season changed.
I felt in sync with the year.
And I’ve been noticing how much that matters to me.
I’ve never really connected with January as the beginning of a new year. It feels like such an artificial moment to make resolutions and begin new things.
For me, February, May and September have always felt like much more natural times for beginnings.
This year I even changed my diary to one that runs from July to July.
Such a tiny practical thing!
But I love it.
I have this wonderful feeling of gliding down into the deep winter, carrying everything I’ve gathered and cultivated, and knowing that I’ll rise up on the other side when the season changes again.
It’s a small example of something that feels quite important.
Allowing the structures of my life to reflect my own natural rhythms, rather than constantly trying to fit myself into somebody else’s.
9. Gratitude is something I can feel
There were moments during HARVEST when I felt an enormous appreciation for simply being alive.
For this extraordinary life.
For the people I love, the work I do, the place I live and the relationships I’m part of.
And for my body.
These feet, these knees, these hips.
My breath.
The ground beneath me.
All the things that are so ordinary that I sometimes forget how extraordinary they are.
I’ve been interested in gratitude not just as a thought, but as something I can actually experience in my body.
What happens when I pause long enough to really feel my appreciation?
It’s a lovely thing to explore.
And perhaps one of the simplest harvests available to us is recognising what is already good.
10. The harvest is not the end
And this is where I’ve arrived after 21 days.
The apples are picked. The grapes are in the freezer. The jars are filling the shelves. The beeswax is waiting to be made into something.
The growing season is coming to an end.
But the story isn’t finished.
Because now we get to do something with what we’ve gathered.
And that feels like such a natural transition into November.
Traditionally, as people moved into the darker months, they turned their attention to making.
Working with wood, wool, wax and all the materials gathered throughout the year.
Carving, weaving, knitting, sewing, making things for their homes and gifts for the people they loved.
And I can feel that creative part of myself stirring.
I’ve always loved making things. I studied graphic design and have explored pottery, batik, woodturning, carving and all sorts of crafts over the years.
But that part of me doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.
So our next 21-day journey is called CREATIVE.
We’ll continue with our 20 minutes of morning yoga, and I’m inviting anyone who fancies it to spend another 15 minutes each day doing something creative.
It might be making something, drawing, writing, knitting, carving, journaling or simply exploring an idea.
Nothing enormous.
Nothing that needs to be perfect.
Just giving ourselves a little time to create.
Because perhaps that’s what I’ve learned most deeply from HARVEST.
What we give our attention to grows.
And what we cultivate today becomes the material of our future lives.
So I’m finishing these 21 days with enormous gratitude.
For the garden, the seasons, my body, my life, and all of you who turn up and share these mornings with me.
And I’m very curious about what we’ll create next.
Be Well, Be Awesome, Be You..
LOVE CIARA
Our next 21-day yoga journey, CREATIVE, begins November 1st.
Join me LIVE at 7 AM on YouTube, or watch back anytime.
