Five Pond Practices
...and how they will help you to be a healthy & happy pond/person
Okay, I admit it. I am a teensy bit obsessed with my new (inherited-with-the-house) pond.
A few weeks ago I fished two buckets of smelly slime from the bottom, and as I watched the sediment cloud the water I thought about how it is to do deep therapeutic work. Hence, my pond practices were born!
These five practices remind us of the various resources we already have. They also show us that we need different resources at different points in our life, and encourage us to seek these out.
Today I’ll give you an overview of all five, and then we’ll look at one in more depth each month over the next six months. There is a short suggested exercise at the end.
So - how can we keep a pond person healthy and happy?
Dredge: Deep work
We all have layers of gunge at the bottom of our psyches. It’s not always possible to process things when they happen, and so it’s healthy to let intense emotion or overwhelm sink into the darkness and leave it be. It’s totally fine to leave that stuff undisturbed, and deep work is not a requirement of moving towards love. Also, life sometimes pokes at this stuff - despite our best efforts to avoid it. Either way, there are ongoing opportunities to gently delve into the depths, pull it up to towards the light and offer it healing. Healing, in the case of my pond, is putting the sludge on the compost heap where it can eventually transmogrify into roses. Anything intentional or unintentional that disturbs our depths goes into this category.
Filter: Ongoing maintenance
Our pond filter is always switched on. Our bodies need all sorts of things to function as well as they can, from brushing our teeth to visits to the optician to eating our vegetables. Our relationships need tending to. Our hunger for learning or creativity needs feeding. We need to look after the health of our finances. Anything that is an ongoing need, and that contributes to our wellbeing, goes into this category.
Treat: Rebalancing
Our pond was choked by blanketweed, and we had to treat it so the rest of the plants could flourish. When ongoing maintenance is neglected, or as a result of environmental or internal factors, sometimes we need some extra help. This may be as a result of illness, or a traumatic series of events, or simply a time of our life which brings something to the surface. Rebalancing can be micro (a massage) or macro (a divorce). Anything that is a one-off need and that contributes to our wellbeing goes into this category.
Enjoy: Follow your bliss
I realised that I was looking after our pond so well because I had come to love it so much. We humans function better if we take time to explore what we feel drawn to, what brings us happiness. I’m borrowing the phrase ‘follow your bliss’ from Joseph Campbell, who also believed it was important to do this in order to pursue a meaningful life. Anything you do that helps you to follow your bliss goes into this category.
Rest: Let it be
After dredging the pond, the water is thick with a cloud of disturbed sediment. I can’t see properly to do any more dredging, and what the pond really needs is time to settle again. Our pond also needed time for our new plants to establish themselves, and for our new fish to get used to their new home without being bothered. Sometimes the best action is no action (sometimes accompanied by patience and/or faith). Anything that allows things to settle for a while goes into this category.
What else do I know about ponds/people?
All ponds are different
Some are ma-hoo-ssive and some are teensy tiny and perfectly formed. Some are in the tropics are some are in shady Scandinavian woods. Some are suitable for frogs to have babies, and others contain fish (like ours) who will eat the frogspawn all up.
Ponds have different seasons
New ponds need extra attention. When the frost threatens we will need to overwinter our pond lettuces in the porch. Different plants will come and go as the ecosystem shifts over time. All ponds are impermanent, just like people (although some of them will live a lot longer than us).
We might not be able to get the pond of our dreams
There are limits to every pond - what landscape it’s situated in, its particular history, the local weather conditions, how much money you have to spend on it. Even if you have all the time, money and resources in the world, your pond will know what suits it and it might not be sustainable to turn it into the kind of pond it’s not.
What kind of pond are you? What season are you in? How satisfied are you with who you are?
A suggested exercise
You might want to spend some time writing a list of the things you already have or do in each category. You don’t have to do them perfectly or reliably to add them to the list.
As you write, get curious. Which of the categories do you avoid or rarely manage to make time for? Which of the categories are you good at? What do you especially need today, or in this season of your life? What one thing might you add to the health of your pond?
Going gently
A note for anyone who’s had critical parts1 activated by anything you’ve read here. Critical parts - I hear you! You think your person could be doing things better, and that it’s in their best interests to give them a kick up the backside!
It’s hard work to be an ordinary human, and sometimes all we can manage is glancing at our pond guiltily before going back to fighting fires or numbing out.
The marvellous things about ponds is that they’re pretty resilient. We do what we can to look after ourselves, and sometimes we don’t have the energy or the emotional capacity to do very much at all. That’s okay.
Maybe someone else can pop over to feed our fish for a while. Maybe we can accept the blanketweed and enjoy watching it sway in the water. Maybe we can wrap ourselves in a blanket and sit alongside our friend the frog until we feel a bit better. We are doing the best we can.
I know that all ponds are beautiful, just as they are. I’d love you to know that too.
Love, Satya <3
Read more about the Moving Towards Love project here.
Satya Robyn is a writer, psychotherapist & Buddhist teacher. She co-led the Bright Earth temple for a decade, has written ten books, and takes part in eco-activist projects. She lives happily in Malvern Wells in the UK with her spouse Kaspa & two little dogs.