From Temple to Garden
For years, I heard — and even taught — the phrase:
“Your body is the temple of God.”
It’s true.
But it never fully worked for me.
When I pictured a temple, I saw hierarchy:
Walls.
Rooms.
Inner courts.
Outer courts.
Veils.
A center where access was restricted and authority flowed downward.
Without realizing it, that image shaped how I related to my body.
A structure to manage.
A place to control.
Something to get “right.”
Not a place to live with God.
Not my experience of God in Heaven.
The Parallel I Didn’t See at First
Early in my career in health and medical care — especially as a brain health specialist — I held a similar framework.
The brain was the center.
The command hub.
The place that told everything else what to do.
The body followed orders.
Top down.
Hierarchy.
It mirrored the temple image perfectly.
But science — and lived experience — began to dismantle that model.
We now know:
The gut has its own nervous system, profoundly shaping mood, immunity, and cognition.
The heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.
Every cell communicates, adapts, and responds intelligently.
Physiology shapes emotion just as much as emotion shapes physiology.
The body is not a dictatorship.
It’s a partnership.
A living, responsive, relational ecosystem.
And that’s when it clicked.
The Garden Revelation
One day in prayer — not striving, not studying — I felt God whisper something that rearranged everything:
“The temple was created to reflect something far more beautiful —
the Garden of Eden.”
Of course.
The temple was never the destination.
It was a symbol.
A shadow of something older, freer, and more intimate.
Before hierarchy, there was harmony.
Before command centers, there was communion.
Before walls, there was walking together.
Gardens, Not Structures
A temple is maintained through control.
A garden is tended through relationship.
A temple can be destroyed — history proves that.
But a garden?
It regenerates.
It adapts.
It multiplies.
It responds to care.
That’s not just spiritual language — it’s biological truth.
Our bodies don’t heal through domination.
They heal through safety, communication, and partnership.
Exactly how a garden thrives.
Jesus Didn’t Reinforce the Walls
Jesus rarely did His work inside temples.
He healed in homes.
At tables.
On hillsides.
By wells.
In community.
And when the veil was torn, it wasn’t poetic symbolism.
It was a declaration:
God no longer dwells behind the walls we created.
Yet we still live as if He does.
As if God is found primarily in buildings with crosses —
as if sacrifice is still required —
as if our bodies are unsafe places for Him to dwell.
That has never been my experience of God.
Not my experience of the Creator in Heaven.
Not with Jesus, Emmanuel/God among us.
Not in the quiet places.
I’ve known Him as near.
Present.
Gentle.
Delighted.
Within.
The Body as Eden — Spiritually and Physiologically
When I began to see my body not just as a temple,
but as a living garden…
Something softened.
I wasn’t something to manage.
I was something to tend.
My nervous system responded.
My health shifted.
My relationship with God deepened.
Because gardens are relational by design.
And this is the grounding of Our Bodies as the Garden of Eden —
and the heart of The Eden Within Coaching launching later this year.
Not fixing bodies.
Not controlling minds.
But restoring partnership — system to system, body to soul, humanity to God.
The Choice We Get to Make
We get to choose how we see God.
And how we see God shapes how we see ourselves.
A God who demands distance
creates bodies that feel unsafe.
A God who is Love
creates gardens meant for communion for His precious children.
You are not just a structure.
You are not a hierarchy.
You are not a container God visits occasionally.
You are a beloved garden.
Biological.
Spiritual.
Infinite.
And the Gardener has never left.
Infinite love and blessings,
Nicholas