By Sarah Lang | Growing Places Indy
Photo by Monroe Bush
Tiffianie King has many passions – education, gardening, health and fitness, meditation. And through the Growing Places Indy Practitioner Program, she is learning how to connect the two of them in a way that reaches central Indiana children.
King, a former educator and certified vinyasa meditation/yoga instructor, is the founder of 3BFIT Body Beauty Brain, a mindfulness program working through schools and organizations to promote positive self-awareness and healthy well-being. When she learned of GPI’s Practitioner Program, she saw an opportunity to combine and develop her interests in gardening and mindfulness.
“I thought this would be a great opportunity to participate in the program to learn more and to see how I can correlate the two and have mindfulness in the classroom that is centered around growing things,” she said.
King used to have a garden at her previous residence but no longer does since moving to an apartment. Looking back, she realizes how much she enjoyed growing her own produce, seeing the fruits of her labor.
“There is a certain personal confidence that comes from growing and eating your own food,” she said. “And that is a viable way to provide access to people to food without having a high cost.”
But King gets more out of gardening than the confidence or cost savings of a good crop. Being connected to the soil has a grounding effect. And when combined with mindfulness – which King describes as the art of being still, being able to calm your own nervous system and to be aware of what’s going on in and around you – can have a positive effect on both people and their environments.
Through the program, King is taking the wisdom and experience she already holds related to mindfulness, layering it together with what she’s learning about urban farming and incorporating it into the curriculum she uses in 3BFIT.
And she’s learning a lot. She’s visited many different types of farms in the Indianapolis area – including ones that are less than a mile from her home that she didn’t know existed. She’s learning how to test the soil to see what types of nutrients might need to be added, how to start a small garden and transition up to a larger-scale operation, and more.
“It’s not as challenging as you think to actually start and operate a small farm,” she said. “It’s not as expensive as you may think.”
She’s also deepening her understanding of mindfulness, as the program includes mindfulness components and experiential learning as well.
King wants the community to know that these programs are needed and are not a waste of time or money.
“More people want produce than we think,” she said. “That needs to be more of a focus, showing people the actual experience and the reward you get from growing and eating your own food. I think more people would want to grow their own food more after that initial experience.”