How to Make a Tabletop Zen Garden

A Zen Garden is a creative tool to calm anxiety, quiet the mind and relax an individual to relieve stress and be open to more creative and joyful thoughts. It can be meditative as well. Not in a New Age sense either. It can simply slow one’s mind down enough to focus on one thought at a time or cause one to explore a thought outside of a traditional line of thought, or “outside the box”. A traditional Zen Garden implements all natural elements, but this isn’t absolutely necessary.

The tools needed for the project are:

The tray can be a wooden, metal, plastic or ceramic item and not a tray at all. It could be a bowl. The sand should be clean, sterilized sand, white sand preferred, and this can be purchased at a craft or hobby store.

The rocks could be polished stones, or even gems from custom jewelry. In addition to, or instead of rocks, you could also use petrified wood, shells or sand dollars. The rake need only be a raking instrument like a small fork or comb, or some other pronged instrument.

Seniors can write in the sand or just create patterns in lines or swirls. Very easy to erase what has been done, start over and make a new design. No rules to Zen Garden use and creativity.

Using a plastic container or tray with a closing lid is a great way to put it aside for storage until it is pulled out again to use.

You can find many more Tabletop Zen Gardens here.

For calm, check out this blog on rest and relaxation.