I find the Body garden section easier to describe than the Heart or Psyche sections we recently explored. Its physical nature makes it quantifiable and cause-and-effect relationships between external actions and internal states should be easy to identify and measure, right? It is with this in mind that I focused today’s drawing almost exclusively on the Body section, leaving others largely empty, to find simple patterns. Interpreting it proved to be fun and a bit more complex than expected.

As usual, slide the vertical line to see how the garden section grew.

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Red in blue

At first glance, the inner section appears crowded as motifs in varying colours intertwine, offering room for interpretation.

Light and dark blue waters stretch between the words Mind, Body, and Psyche to form a small lake that overflows into the Mind section and lightly touches Psyche. Its darker ultramarine centre is threaded with short green strands, from which thin, light red flowers emerge like small, scarlet bursts resembling will-o’-the-wisps. These unexpected flashes of fire are the first indication that something is off.

In my visual language, red has no natural place in the blue of the Body section. When it appears, it signifies discomfort or pain. That morning, I experienced acute pain in the right side of my head—an aftereffect of energetic teeth grinding during the night. It took over an hour of careful jaw stretches before the pain subsided.

We also find a darker red near the letters B and O of Body, as irregular patches form idly to push the water back in the inner section. I associate these broader dark red marks with a diffuse pain in my lower right back and shoulder after my last CrossFit workouts.

I like the idea that the drawing distinguishes between these sensations: the sharp internal jaw pain is depicted by vivid, sharp flowers at the core of the garden as if they originated from within myself while the more diffuse external muscle soreness is revealed by the larger patches closer to the garden’s edge, reflecting their origin in visible physical exertion.

The red elements and the discussion around pain took over this discussion and led us away from the blue waters. Coming back to them after having acknowledged pain, we can appreciate how they evolve from deep ultramarine to lighter azure, conveying a sense of lightness, almost sky-like. Even the shape of the small lake evokes wings, spanning across the inner Body and touching Mind and Psyche as if to join their inner cores together while the outside is looser.

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Connections between outside and inside

A blue-green patch of horizontal grass blades comes out of the water in the Mind outer section. Made of mainly greenish turquoise strands with ultramarine and azure, it acts as a soothing influence coming from the outside, in opposition to the physical pains expressed by the red flowers, as if the physical pain were being offset by the exterior stimuli.

On the right, within the Body section, fizzy bubbles of neon orange and dark ochre rise from the waters, drifting into Psyche before settling on an emerald green patch at the bottom of the drawing. I cannot decide if they are bubbles or, more fitting for a garden, heavy ripe wheat grains. The Champagne interpretation is more attractive as it suggests joyous energy flow connecting my psyche and body, a form of lightness I did feel that day.

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Air and water

We find this sentiment again a bit further to the left in the outside section of Body where a multi-coloured cloud of azure, ultramarine, and carmine hues swirls in concentric circles. Here, again, I’m reminded that my general feeling that day was one of strength, lightness, and restfulness.

The swirling cloud emerges from another pond of dark blue waters with ultramarine patches floating above, echoing the inner section. It moves upwards towards the Mind section as if it had to float around the word Body, which acts like an elastic barrier separating the inner and outer sections. In contrast, the words Mind and, to a lesser degree, Psyche, seem permeable. They allow inside and outside to interact right through themselves as if they were transparent.

Finally, at the base of the drawing and at the end of our garden exploration, we see flattened grass patches on the left, offering a stable grounding in blue and green where the cloud and pond come to rest. Nearby, deeper green tones appear where the energetic bubbles settle into dark ochre filaments.

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More to it than a body

What began as a straightforward study of a garden drawing dedicated to the Body section grew more complex in an interesting way as the section interacts with the neighbouring Mind and Psyche sections. Internally, the three areas are tightly interconnected by the blue waters while externally they drift apart, dispersed by red and blue winds from a swirling cloud.

Separation on the outside, cohesion on the inside. Unconnected external stimuli trigger reactions that interact within the five inner sections of my garden to gradually coalesce into a unified core. Of course, this remains a simplified vision as I focused the drawing on only one section and left the other four blank. I’ll turn to the more complete garden versions after concluding these focused studies with the final post on Soul.

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