Digging in the dirt is a mental health remedy

I spent the past few weekends with my hands in the dirt.

We are fortunate to have several gardens, including one populated entirely with native plants. I decided it needed a lot more attention than I’ve provided in past years, so it was shovels and hoes and partnering with the life force.

Well, now all but done, I’ve found myself walking out to the gardens repeatedly. Mostly, I just look at them, strolling about to change perspectives, often touching the plants, now well on their way to adolescence.

And it feels right in a rock-solid sort of way. Which may explain why gardening is the most prevalent leisure activity in America.

As my Irish Mom often said, “When you don’t feel right, you just need to get dirt under your fingernails.” She saw it as a prescription for well-being, and it is. In fact, research shows contact with a kind of benign bacteria in soil improves mood by altering the gut-brain connection.

Regardless, my labors are what I call “real work.” Now, I’ve spent my adult life engaged in serving others, for which I am grateful, but it’s not the sort of work you experience when gardening, woodworking, painting, cooking and the like.

Real work engages all the senses at a high level. That doesn’t mean it’s always pleasant. My first job at 14 was hoeing on a tree nursery, all day, five days a week.

The rest of the crew, save one fellow teen, were migrant laborers who spoke little English. Bored the stuffing out of me, but also taught me to appreciate work that is tangible, that one feels in both body and mind.

It’s also the sort of experience that affords the opportunity to observe the fruits of one’s labor. Sometimes I see this when working with a counseling client, but even then it has an ethereal rather than tangible feel to it.

Throughout college, I worked road construction each summer. I could see what I helped create, and even drive on it later. There’s a peculiar sort of satisfaction that comes with surveying the touchable results of one’s labors.

This may explain, in part, research showing that creative activities involving the hands enhance well-being, in some cases to the point of lessening depression. Knitting is one example of this antidepressant effect.

Of course, our hands are the primary means by which we physically interact with the environment. So, when we deliberately use them to create something of value (I include music and writing in this), we feel a sense of mastery and empowerment, not in a boorish way, but with deep satisfaction.

Because psychotherapy focuses on thinking, emotions and certain behaviors, it rarely conveys a palpable sense of having created something. It sometimes affords a deep emotional and spiritual satisfaction in connecting meaningfully with others, but it’s not the same as observing the products of real work.

Which makes it all the more important to include real work in my time outside the office. For farm kids like me, the warm season expedites joining with the life force in the act of creation.

Real work. It does a mind good.