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RaissaMendes00
The story of how The Garden came to be.
The Garden did not begin with a business plan. It began with a body that was learning to rest again — and with a pair of hands that could not stop wanting to grow things. Raissa Mendes came to Shenzhen carrying what many people carry when they arrive in a new city — a full life, a fast pace, and a quiet hunger for something she could not quite name yet. What she found — in stillness, in movement, in the frequency of crystal bowls and the warmth of ceremonial cacao, and in the simple act of planting something and watching it grow — was a thread that kept leading her back to herself. And slowly, she realized: what was healing for one person could be healing for many.
Shekou has always been a village within a city — international, creative, and rooted. And within it, Raissa found something even more rare: a rooftop with soil, sky, and silence enough to grow something real. She planted the garden herself. Every leaf, every pot, every carefully chosen plant is something she has tended with her own hands — a lover of nature long before she was a healer, bringing that same devotion to the space that would eventually hold others. What began as a personal act of care for a rooftop gradually became a sanctuary that the community found its way to, one person at a time. The birds came on their own.
We believe rest is essential, and that slowing down is a way of honoring the body. The Garden exists to offer practices that regulate the nervous system, open the heart, and restore the quiet sense of self that modern life can wear away. Here, healing is a remembering — something the body already knows how to do, given space, time, and a little permission. The body knows how to heal. We help it remember.
Join us for a class, a ceremony, a retreat, or just a conversation.