For in the introduction of a plant, not so much the planting of the seed in the soil, you see, but the working with the hands and the face, particularly in the transplanting of the young starts into the Earth and the watering of these, in a sense this is a participation in a birth, a first breath, a refreshing breath of a plant and releases a burst of oxygen into the self and the face.
If we could describe it, it is more than that. It is participation with the plant in its work and its purpose, its life purpose, if you will. There is the symbiotic relationship between the human and the plant and in your healing of it and the soil. The soil and the plant in turn heal the self, the body, and even the breathing.
For the symbiotic relationship depends a great deal upon your breathing upon the plant as you put it into the soil, giving forth the carbon dioxide, to put it in simple terms. But more effectively perhaps, the breathing of your attitude upon the plant in introducing it to life and the opportunity for expression.
In this moment of tenderness between the planter and the planted, there is exchange of vital energies for the healing of both, but in opposite directions. As you give forth that which is released from your body and which stimulates the life of the plant, so the life of the plant in turn gives forth its excess in oxygen, if you will, but more appropriately, in the full breath returning to the human that which is given in love from one to the other and is the most vital of the healing processes.”
