“We need to collaborate with the power of nature left free, doing as much as possible and as little as possible,”

said Gilles Clément, the great French landscape architect.

 

In the following article I wanted to give space to one of the most beautiful gardens in Ireland written by Kathleen Becker taken from Speak up:

“An hour’s drive from Dublin, Powerscourt Gardens is home to romantic lakes, beautiful statues, delicious food, a children’s museum and the country’s highest waterfall.

It’s a paradise to discover, with a history dating back to the 13th century.

Did you know that Country Wicklow is called “ the Garden of Ireland ?”

Wicklow also has the best garden in Ireland to visit:

Powerscourt, an aristocratic place, full of beauty, variety and educational value.

Up to early summer, the rhododendrons impress with pinks and purples.

The famous roses follow soon after.

 

UNDER THE MOUNTAIN

Powerscourt is a fine mix of Italian and French design, Irish charm and the attention to detail associated with the English gardening tradition.

The garden paths, made up of small granite chips, dazzle in the sunlight.

The harmonious design aims to set the garden in its wider context , the iconic Sugar Loaf mountain.

JAPANESE

The garden has many sculptures. Life-size metal horses guard the big lake. Small stone cherubs, deep in thought, frame a bowl of pansies. The iron gates are very photogenic. Visitors can discover small ornamental plants and large ancient trees – there are 250 types of trees here. The Japanese Gardens is very pretty. Last but not least, the Pet’s Cemetery has touching inscriptions on its gravestones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THAT’S THE SPIRIT!

A castle stood here from the 13^th century onwards. But a new era commenced in Elizabeth times.

After a viuctorious battle , Queen Elizabeth I offered Richard Wingfield a reward.

He only requested “the scarf that Your Majesty wears”. Obviously, that modesty paid off: Richard Wingfield became a Sir and was given Powerscourt. The house was rebuilt in the 1730s.

A century later Powerscourt was reshaped by the sixth Viscount of Powerscourt . The new garden were designed by influential architect Daniel Robertson. Robertson suffered from gout, directing operations from a wheelbarrow, fortified by a bottle of sherry.

When the sherry bottle was empty , work ceased for the day.

 

DISASTROUS

In 1961 the estate passed to the Slazenger family, the owners of one of the oldest surviving sporting brands. In the 1970s, they were preparing to open Powerscourt to tourism, when disaster struck. One night in 1974 a fire broke out and destroyed the house. Only an empty shell was left. The planned opening had to wait for nearly a quarter of a century. In 1996 a major golf course opened.

A year later Powerscourt finally opened to the public.

It attracts some 200.000 annual visitors.

 

BACK TO NATURE

Gardening is seen as a typically English pastime, but there are also plenty of beautiful gardens in Ireland. The best is probably Powerscourt in Country Wicklow. This was once the property of Lord Powerscourt, but it is now owned by the Slazenger family, who are famous for making sporting equipment.

 

Powerscourt has Japanese gardens but, as head gardener Michael Byrne explains, pride of place goes to the

They were started around 1840, and they took about 30-40 years to complete.

Now, so they were finished in about 1875. The actual design of Italian garden and the terraces comes from a villa in Sicily.

So the design was there , and the architect was a chap called Daniel Robertson, quite a famous architect. It took about 50 years, and it was 100 people working here over that time, 12-hour days. And it was all dug out by hand. So you can imagine the amount of work and labour that went in when we have machines these days to do everything.

 

Before we only had wheel-barrows and spades. So a real credit. And the whole idea of laying out the Italian gardens was a vista basically, and a backdrop to the Sugar Loaf mountain, which we can see in the distance. And basically, the whole garden was landscaped and designed around the mountain.

Lord Powerscourt wanted to come out and have his breakfast here and that’s the view he wanted.”

 

 

 

“Take care of your home, of your body, do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis, become like the eagle that sees everything and sees more widely. Through joy one resists.

Have faith, you have been prepared to overcome this crisis.

When the storm passes, you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world, you have to feel good and be strong.

For this reason, it tries to maintain a high, happy and bright vibration. Take advantage of this time to exercise your vision and seek your rituals. This is what you can do: serenity in the storm. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day, good things emanate what you emanate, now is the most important thing. Sing, dance resist through art, joy, faith and love. ”

Message from White Eagle, Indigenous of the Amerida Tribe.

 

If you are been looking for a good reason to Treat Your Self, you probably don’t do it often enough.

A 2-month holistic yoga retreat isn’t necessary either.

You can get nourishment simply by putting on the radio and shakin’ what your mama gave you for a few minutes.

Putting “me time” on the back burner is a big part of why we can all feel run-down, frenzied, and overwhelmed. Enter self-care, who cuddles you and tells you everything’s alright.

Even during COVID-19, when many of us have more free time than we know what to do with, self-betterment became difficult after the seventh day in pyjama bottoms.

It seems that 21st-century life revolves around working ’til your eyes bleed or spending months on lockdown with nothing to do. However, it’s more important than ever to be kind to yourself and make self-care a priority.

 

What’s the deal?

Often ignored but totally necessary, self-care is any action or behaviour that helps a person avoid health problems. We forget to listen to our inner voice: we forget what our real needs are, what are our aspirations, our talents, we give up our dreams. We forget ourselves and struggle to make the difference between what feeds us and what makes us more and more lazy, tired, unhappy.

We often remember ourselves when the mental burden becomes too overwhelming, when the body collapses, when the heart, wounded and exhausted, falls in front of the last loss. We remember too many sacrifices made when it is too late or when it hurts.

 

Excessive stress may increase your risk of heart problems, for example. So, by definition, stress relief can help someone keep their ticker ticking.

Self-care also helps us sharpen our mental and physical health through better self-esteem, stress management, and overall well-being.

These behaviours help provide balance in an increasingly overstimulating world. Self-care forms an essential part of a lifestyle that keeps us healthy, happy, and more in tune with our minds and bodies.

It’s easy to confuse self-care with self-indulgent behaviour. This mentality might make us feel guilty for thinking we need to take a break from our lives to do something that, simply put, makes us feel better.

However, it’s also important not only to be kind to yourself and allow good, nourishing things into your life but also to know your own line. Self-indulgence involves little quick fixes that feel better temporarily.

These are fine in moderation, and who doesn’t love a treat? But quick bursts of indulgence are not a sustainable route to health and happiness — and they can affect others too.

A 2019 study, for example, found that student nurses may neglect their own health and wellness needs while training to look after others — and this might, in turn, reduce their effectiveness when providing care.

That’s why taking the time to check in with your mind and body isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, the pursuit of health and happiness is far from selfish.

When we take good care of ourselves, we’re likely to see an improvement in many aspects of our lives, including our physical health and relationships. And this puts us in a better position to serve as a pillar of support for people we love.

 

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be sure you can improve, and that’s you.

-Aldous Huxley-

 

We can return to inhabit ourselves, to inhabit all that we are, to fill our lives with our presence

 

Our needs: the Maslow pyramid

In psychology, the need is the perception of the lack of one or more elements that constitute the well-being of the person; not responding to needs implies undermining this well-being, but what are our needs?

Around the 1950s, the psychologist Abraham Maslow conceived the hierarchy of needs, which he represented schematically with the pyramid that still bears his name today: Maslow’s pyramid.

 

The Maslow pyramid consists of 5 levels of needs:

– First step: Physiological needs (food, breath, etc.).

– Second step: safety and protection needs.

– Third step: needs of belonging.

– Fourth step: needs for esteem, for success.

– Fifth step: needs for fulfilment.

 

But in addition to Maslow’s pyramid, there are other models of representations of needs, including Virginia Henderson’s grid of 14 fundamental needs, which takes into account not only the needs mentioned by Maslow but also the desire for freedom of the person and his individuality: each of us has different needs.

Virginia Henderson’s grid is still used today in nursing care.

“While it is important to establish that there are needs common to all, it is equally important to realise that these needs are met according to the different ways of conceiving life, of which there are infinite varieties.

(Virginia Henderson)

So there are many ways to take care of yourself, but all emerge from the same matrix, that is, to respond to your needs.

The needs of a being are not limited only to the physical, material sphere, such as having what is necessary to live healthy, safe, protected; the real needs of a human being range from feeling loved, respected, a member of a peer group, feeling to have a place in the world, a useful role for the community, being able to live new experiences that broaden the spectrum of his perceptions, being able to rely on intellectual stimuli, etc.

Each of us has specific needs and ignoring them can lead to not living well, not feeling complete and fulfilled.

The mistake is to confuse the minimum necessary to live well with exclusively material needs (the first step of the Maslow pyramid) because they are the most concrete and visible, and consequently, to forget that we are beings made of emotions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, creativity, instincts.

You can always start to listen to yourself to make up for it, you can always start to find the middle way between your concrete needs in everyday life and your inner needs, to get to know you better, to respect and love you in your plural being and to walk with dignity in the world. With kindness and attention to your being.

Taking care of you is the first step to make in order to live well

You can take care of yourself by also observing the nature around you: trees do not give up taking from the earth what they need to grow strong, vigorous, trees do not take the narrow-mindedness essential to survive (barely); they take what they need to live well, to grow and bear fruit.

“Take care of yourself.

Whenever growing up, you feel like changing the wrong things into the right things, remember that the first revolution you have to make is the one inside yourself, the first and most important. Fighting for an idea without having any idea of yourself is one of the most dangerous things you can do.

Every time you feel lost, confused, think of the trees, remember how they grow.

Remember that a tree with lots of foliage and few roots is uprooted at the first blow of the wind, while in a tree with lots of roots and few foliages the sap hardly flows. Roots and foliage have to grow in equal measure, you have to stay in things and stand on them, only then can you offer shade and shelter, only then can you cover yourself with flowers and fruits at the right season. And when many roads open up in front of you and you don’t know which one to take, don’t take one at random, but sit down and wait.

Breathe with the trusting depth with which you breathed the day you came into the world, without being distracted by anything, just wait and wait and wait. Be still, silent, and listen to your heart. When it speaks to you, stand up and go where it takes you.”

(Taken from the book “Go where your heart takes you”, by Susanna Tamaro)

It is very likely that when you come back to answer all your needs, to take care of yourself, you will feel a subtle joy: not the one you feel in the absence of problems but the one you feel despite the problems.

 

 

Knowing our roots helps us to understand who we are, where we come from and what we can do in our lives. The knowledge passed down from mother to daughter, for generations, it is a treasure of inestimable value.

 

 

To be a woman means to welcome its rhythms, its waves, which flow together with nature, to enter into communication with that intuition which is unfortunately rarely fully understood or listened to, to perceive the world in a different, less linear and more cyclical way, to have special attention to one’s “tribe”, and to know how to mobilize when one needs one’s own warrior forces to defend what is dear to one’s heart.

The legacy of the female lineage teaches us to change the world, to revolutionize it in a gentle way, without weapons, without violence. With fairness.

But in order to reach a balanced and centred state of power on which women can give life to a new tomorrow, they need to recover their memory: the ancestral memory conveyed by their mothers, grandmothers, ancestors, the memory that flows within them, the memory that leads them to have such a special connection with nature and with other people’s feelings.

In order to give themselves this possibility, mothers have this great and profound task: to guide their daughters, to help them to listen to the voice of their authentic being, so different from that of today’s world shaped on a more linear and hierarchical, less collaborative, less feminine, but not for this reason more powerful.

 

“Raising a young woman is an important task for a mother. To teach her to love her body, to recognise her talents, to cultivate within her the ancient wisdom of the female lineage is a responsibility that requires commitment and a great deal of sensitivity”.

(Taken from “Custodian of the Sacred Fire” by Alessandra Comneno. Anima Ed.).

 

We should remember the fiery, active aspect of the woman, when in ancient times she was the guardian of the sacred fire and of the fire of the hearth, of the fire of life But women are not only welcoming, generous as the earth; they can be the fire that warms, that excites and sometimes destroys and transforms, and for this reason, it is useful that each one can count on the wise, conscious and kind guidance of another woman who will be able to accompany her on her journey of discovery of the ancient wisdom of which she is the guardian.

 

Many women have forgotten that they have an ancient guardian of fire in their lineage, but in every woman there is still a spark of that ancient transforming flame. A spark that simply needs to be seen, valued, nourished, guided by a mother, whether of blood or soul, it does not matter; that spark is a fire in power that every woman can transmit: she can pass on what she has received and what she has learned to her daughters, in a virtuous evolutionary cycle, not only for the good of women, but for the good of all, because we are all sons and daughters of a mother.

Better world for future generations

 

Women are able to mobilize their forces across the four corners of the planet, in the heart of the most bitter conflicts, and to do so by singing, bringing a hope of peace, a message; by showing, through concrete action in the world, that what unites us can be stronger than what separates us.

Here is the Prayer of the Mothers, the hymn of “Women Wage Peace”, a women’s movement for peace that has mobilized thousands of women, from different cultures and religions, in a peaceful way; women who have made their voices heard in times of war and who have shown the world that the power of the Mothers is strong and present and that she is able to spread her voice everywhere in the world.

 

Prayer of the Mothers

A whisper of ocean wind

Is blowing from far away

And laundry is flapping

To the shadow of the wall

Between the sky and the land

There are people who want to live in peace

Don’t give up, keep dreaming

Of peace and prosperity

When will the walls of fear melt

When will I return from exile

And my gates will open

To what is truly good

Come on Sleep! – Another sunrise

Come on Sleep – And morning is here

We will slaughter – A mother sends

A pigeon for you – Along with a prayer

Fly pigeon, Don’t believe – Her child to school

We will laugh with the child – to the sound

So that he may sleep – of war

The walls of fear will some day melt

And I will return from exile

My gates shall open

To what is truly good

from the north to the south

from the west to the east

hear the prayer of the mothers

bring them peace

bring them peace

Light is rising from the east to the prayer of the mothers for peace

 

 

 

Everything we create comes from a force of energy. That energy starts from our thoughts, however, before our thoughts, come the feelings. If we connect a strong feeling or emotion to a thought, it is the universal law that this MUST become an experience.

 

 

Literally, the law of attraction states that “like attracts like”. In order to gain positive results while using this law, you need to keep up a positive outlook on life. The law of attraction teaches that joy brings joy; thoughts of money bring money; anger receives anger; fear causes fear; laughter makes more laughter, and a positive outlook attracts others with positive outlooks.

For example; If you want to spring clean the house, you do not aimlessly wander around and start cleaning. You have the idea (the thought), followed by the feeling and then take action. Sometimes we “feel” like doing something, and other times, we don’t. Either way, it is produced by either a thought or a feeling.

Our emotions are what create our manifestations. The two most important emotions to ensure you manifest your desires are Passion and Excitement. Take a look back at a time in your life, where you felt genuine passion and excitement. It could have been with regards to a new job, a promotion or the thought of having a child. You may not have been aware, but the moment you felt that genuine passion and excitement, you were visualising the event and by visualising, you were manifesting the thought and feeling into an experience. Many people live their lives, the way society tells them to. We become a creature of habit, comparing ourselves to people around us.

 

By doing this, we live our lives with limited beliefs, therefore, creating a limited lifestyle. One way to create a limitless life is affirmations. Affirmations are a short statement, that you repeat all day, every day but with feeling. For example; If you have a bad “feeling” towards money, then the law is to create a further lack of money.

However, by using an affirmation such as, “money comes to me easily and frequently”, this can change. It is important to note that but just repeating the words, nothing will change.You have to FEEL and BELIEVE in what you are saying.

 

The power of the law of attraction works like any other law of nature. Just as the law of gravity dictates that what comes up must come down, the law of attraction dictates that your thoughts bring about your desires. Whether you accept it or not, the law is always at work and will keep right on working for you, consciously or unconsciously.

 

But knowing our true series is not an easy job. How to distinguish false desires from authentic ones?

False desires distance us from our authentic goals, the only ones that can make us happy and satisfied. Identifying them is not simple, but a first step is to consider everything that happens to us, including people and surrounding things, like a mirror that can show us parts of ourselves that we might not otherwise see.

Let’s think, for example, of a trivial event as a clogged sink.

 

For example; If you want to spring clean the house, you do not aimlessly wander around and start cleaning. You have the idea (the thought), followed by the feeling and then take action. Sometimes we “feel” like doing something, and other times, we don’t. Either way, it is produced by either a thought or a feeling.

Our emotions are what create our manifestations. The two most important emotions to ensure you manifest your desires are Passion and Excitement. Take a look back at a time in your life, where you felt genuine passion and excitement. It could have been with regards to a new job, a promotion or the thought of having a child. You may not have been aware, but the moment you felt that genuine passion and excitement, you were visualising the event and by visualising, you were manifesting the thought and feeling into an experience. Many people live their lives, the way society tells them to. We become a creature of habit, comparing ourselves to people around us.

By doing this, we live our lives with limited beliefs, therefore, creating a limited lifestyle. One way to create a limitless life is affirmations. Affirmations are a short statement, that you repeat all day, every day but with feeling. For example; If you have a bad “feeling” towards money, then the law is to create a further lack of money.

However, by using an affirmation such as, “money comes to me easily and frequently”, this can change. It is important to note that but just repeating the words, nothing will change.You have to FEEL and BELIEVE in what you are saying.

 

The power of the law of attraction works like any other law of nature. Just as the law of gravity dictates that what comes up must come down, the law of attraction dictates that your thoughts bring about your desires. Whether you accept it or not, the law is always at work and will keep right on working for you, consciously or unconsciously.

 

But knowing our true series is not an easy job. How to distinguish false desires from authentic ones?

False desires distance us from our authentic goals, the only ones that can make us happy and satisfied. Identifying them is not simple, but a first step is to consider everything that happens to us, including people and surrounding things, like a mirror that can show us parts of ourselves that we might not otherwise see.

Let’s think, for example, of a trivial event as a clogged sink.