Leisha When a garden begins to mature, the whole feeling of the place changes.
Perennials settle in and claim their spots. Annuals slip between them, filling the open spaces with color and food. The soil is no longer naked and exposed. It is shaded, held, protected. Life returns in layers. Birds, insects, spiders, worms, roots and unseen microbial worlds all begin to move together again.
That is when the magic of weeding truly begins.
By that stage, I do not stand above the garden as much as I disappear into it. When I kneel to weed, I often find myself under a canopy of leaves and stems. I am not looking down from the outside. I am inside another world.
The light softens. The air feels different. It can be cooler under those leaves, or moist and warm like a forest floor. The sound of the outside world becomes quieter. There is the hum of bees above, birds calling a little further away, but where I am, it is the small movements that matter.
Under the foliage, stems become tree trunks. Leaves become roofs. Roots become foundations. Ants carry their mysterious packages along well worn paths. Spiders keep still in the corners of their webs, waiting. Beetles and other tiny beings walk along what, to them, must be vast soil highways built of crumbs and roots and fungal threads.
I cannot see microbes with my eyes, but I sense them. They are there in the earthy smell that lifts when I loosen the soil. They are there in the way the ground crumbles and holds together at the same time. They are there in the quiet feeling of pulsing life that rises from the roots and falls back into the earth with every fallen leaf.
You can read about the soil food web and living soil philosophy. You can study diagrams and lists and scientific names. All of that has value. But this particular wonder only becomes real when you are kneeling in the garden with your hands in the earth, under the plants, breathing the same air as these small communities.
Gardeners know this. The weeder knows this most of all.
The weeder is the one with the permission to linger. When I weed, I am allowed to move slowly. I am not performing. I am not leading a tour or hurrying to finish so I can go do something more important. The weeding is the important thing. I shift one plant aside, lift a root, smooth the soil back, and in that simple movement, I am part of the city beneath the leaves.
This has become my special place. In new gardens, this is what I wait for. In the beginning, when everything is bare and young, I imagine the future moment when I will be able to crawl into the shade of tall plants, feel the temperature drop, and know that the garden has become an ecosystem again. That is when I feel that life has truly returned.
Living Ground was born from this feeling. It is not really about having a pretty garden. It is about becoming part of a living conversation again.
And this is where the story of wounded teachers and nature connection begins to touch.
In the spiritual and healing world, many people carry deep wounds and a genuine longing to help. Some of them step into the role of teacher before those wounds have had time to settle or be met fully. They may have powerful experiences, visions, awakenings. They may have gathered a lot of knowledge. Their words can be beautiful and inspiring.
Yet if their own pain is still driving the show, something very subtle happens. They begin to draw people around them in a way that feeds their identity as the one who knows, the one who guides, the one who heals. Their unhealed places pull for attention. Often it is not conscious. It just happens.
This is where the guru energy can appear, even in spaces that talk a lot about humility and love.
A wounded teacher who has not grounded in something deeper than their own story can start to use spiritual language as a kind of shield or mask. They may talk about vibration, alignment, manifestation, forgiveness, or karma, but these ideas float above the real, raw layers of grief, anger, fear and confusion that are still sitting there inside. This is what people call spiritual bypassing. Pain is wrapped in pretty concepts instead of being composted as Nature teaches us.
For a while, this can look and feel very shiny. People feel held and they gather together. The group bonds around a shared narrative of light and awakening.
But there is a cost as it is doesn’t actually heal and power begins to move in one direction. Their natural connection to their roots grow weaker.
This is the opposite of what a garden teaches.
A mature garden is not built around one plant. It is built on relationships. Under the canopy, there is no guru. There is only a community of beings, each doing its work, sharing resources, responding to conditions and keeping the circle of life flowing.
The so called weeds arise where they are needed. Deep rooted plants break up hardpan. Groundcovers shade the soil. Flowers call in pollinators. Fungi thread through it all, moving information and nourishment in every direction.
No one is performing. Nothing is pretending to be further along than it is. If something is out of balance, the garden shows it openly. If the soil is depleted, the plants speak through their growth. If there is too much disturbance, certain species move in to heal the wound. It is honest. It is direct. It is real.
When I am under the leaves, weeding, I am not at the center. I am just one more participant. My nervous system feels that truth and its’ softening. The sense of needing to impress or persuade falls away. There is only this root, this small patch of ground, this ant walking past, this breath of soil-scented air.
IMHON, Nature connection, in its truest form, breaks the spell of wounded guru energy.
And, it offers healing at levels the mind can never know.
As Living Ground has rose as a garden in life, I have had to face my own wounded places. My griefs. My disappointments. The parts of me that would secretly love to have everything neatly worked out and okay. The garden does not let me live there for long. It is too honest. If I arrive full of my own stories, it gently but firmly puts me back on my knees with my hands in the soil.
There, the questions change.
Instead of asking, “How can I lead better?” I find myself asking, “How can I listen better?”
Instead of, “How can I be more impressive?” I hear, “How can I be more in relationship?”
Instead of, “How can I fix everyone?” I feel, “How can I be trustworthy company as they meet life for themselves?”
The canopy of plants becomes a clear mirror. If I am performing, I feel it. If I am bypassing my own pain, I feel that too. The garden does not reject me for it. It simply refuses to support the illusion.
Weeders know this….and I invite you come under the leaves. To feel the change in air and temperature. To smell the soil. To notice insects and small climbers and the way roots hold the ground together. I ask them to sit with a single plant, not as a resource to be used, but as someone to meet.
The wounded healer in all of us needs this. Not more theories. Not more roles. More earth. More honest feedback. More moments where the ego is gently humbled by the complexity and generosity of life.
Hand in the soil. Knees pressed into the earth. Back curved under the green roof of leaves. Insects busy. Microbial cities humming. Roots and fungi intertwined. In that place, I am no one special and also part of everything. My own wounds are not denied. They are met. The garden becomes the healer, and I become another student with dirt under my nails.
For me, that medicine is strongest when I am weeding.
This is what I want Living Ground to offer.
Only a garden that has been waiting, very patiently, for you to come close enough to feel how alive it really is.
